I've blogged about building native mobile device applications using a Web technology-based framework such as PhoneGap from Nitobi in the past. When I first wrote about the open source PhoneGap project in March 2009, I concluded: "If I worked at RIM, I'd take a trip out to Vancouver to talk to the Nitobi dudes. This framework is exactly what RIM needs to counter the trend of developers targeting the iPhone/iPod as the premier environment for mobile device applications."
Fast-forward seven months and RIM announces a beta of the BlackBerry Widget SDK that:
allows web developers to package up their web assets into BlackBerry Widgets (small, discrete, standalone web applications that use HTML, CSS and JavaScript). A BlackBerry Widget looks, behaves and has the same security mechanisms as a native BlackBerry application. BlackBerry Widgets can be installed on a BlackBerry smartphone like any native application and can be extended to use device-specific information and data using the BlackBerry Widget APIs.
[ In InfoWorld's Test Center, Peter Wayner discusses PhoneGap and other iPhone development tools and details his rejection at the hands of the iPhone App Store. ]
Wow, sounds like an enhanced PhoneGap tuned for BlackBerry applications. With fingers crossed, I pinged Andre and Dave to ask if RIM was using PhoneGap for this SDK. I'd scoured the BlackBerry Widget SDK website and knew the answer before Dave and Andre replied "nope."
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Bill Gates blasts China for not paying for their software, and then accuses them of software piracy. It looks like Gates is claiming that by using open source (which is not necessarily free, by the way), one is a software pirate. He doesn't actually come out and say this, but he knows that the millions of brainless toadies and the greedy politicians that he owns will come to this conclusion by themselves.
RIM's Blackberry Enterprise Server and RIM's Blackberry Desktop Manager are Windows-only applications. It would seem that, either by choice or by coercion, RIM is firmly entrenched into the Microsoft camp and views the use of open source software as piracy.
I do hope that RIM wakes up and realizes that they are in bed with the Devil himself, and that they seriously listen to your advice, Mr. Rodrigues. I wish you the best of luck.