Greedy Bastards

I’m not a windows mobile developer. And why would you want to be. Seeing this latest article from CNet News, I can’t think of a reason I would want to play in the Micro$oft world of endless, confusing licensing agreements.

Microsoft plans to charge mobile-application developers $99 to release upgraded versions of applications they submit to the Windows Mobile Marketplace, and will also charge them for minor updates unless they are released within seven days of the application’s debut.

When Microsoft announced plans for its Windows Mobile Marketplace application store earlier this month, it said it planned to charge developers $99 a year to participate in the program as well as a $99 fee per application submission–although as part of a promotional offer developers who registered this year could submit up to five applications for free.

The goal of coarse is that you will spend extra time developing your application for a higher quality product. OR, what will probably happen is, there will be bugs, developers won’t give a rats ass if it is a minor bug and they’ll never update their code. So you’ll have a marketplace filled with shitty, un-maintained applications.

Apple has it right on this one. Sure, charge a fee to distribute the app, take some of the money the developer charges for the app seeing as you are serving it up for them. But let them continue to develop and enhance their application as much as they want for free! Higher quality apps, happy programmers.