webOS: Background Apps and Source Code Protection
Not much was revealed from the Developing for webOS webcast (not surprisingly). It was basically a recap of what's already in that 1st chapter of Developing for webOS book from O'Reilly. However, during the Q&A -- A few interesting answers came about. First off, webOS does support multitasking and background apps, but there's a tiny limitation to it. At least for the initial release. Apparently, all your opened cards/apps are running in the background and when you close a card it usually means they are no longer running -- unless they're apps that are sitting in the notifications dashboard. Nothing big.
Secondly, developers are worried that the source code for their apps can easily be copied due to the fact that webOS runs entirely under HTML, AJAX, and Javascript. Mitch Allen said this regarding the issue:
Well, we're pretty concerned about it, we're still looking at it. I don't think we've got any concrete advice to offer yet. I think when the time the SDK comes out we'll be advising developers around that. I think, quite honestly, the community is a bit split. Web content has been fairly exposed [...] some of the people who are providing web content and web services have found ways to protect their applications on the server side. Now, for embedded developers and people who are really purely on the client, that's a lot more of a challenge. I'm not really able to here today say "do this or do that" but we'll have some guidance for people as we come out with the SDK.
It is a big concern of ours and we want to do the best thing for the developer and for the user.
Still no word yet on the release date for the Pre. We hope it'll be "soon".
[via precentral] [img via palminfocenter]
Mitch Allen, Palm Pre, WebOS | Permalink
Reader Comments (1)
The solution is simple.. If the OS only ran (3rd party) encrypted sources and decrypted partial source on the fly, it would take care of the casual pirating.