I'm a reporter/reviewer, not a developer, but I see a lot of gear, speak full metal geek and noticed some strange disconnects that I think you guys may be able to work with each other to fix.
My model for this is the automotive industry, where the manufacturers got together to form a precompetitive committee. The idea was, for example, to reduce the number of battery or headlight bulb types (for example) from a count of hundreds to a count of dozens, which helps reduce everybody's manufacturing and service costs and complications.
Now you guys all start with the same common ground - the API/SDK standards from RIM & your code compiler house.
I'm suggesting a chain of precompetitive islands between there and the handset that can ultimately help keep everybody's code lean and mean.
Let me offer some examples.
- Does/could your application display maps? If every handset application that can present maps offers common hooks for any application to display them, everybody wins.
- Does/could your application make sounds? Ditto.
- Maybe there's a common ground for extending (probably have to work with Nuance on this) the handset's recognition vocabulary, but not just one application at a time. There is a more limited set of functions that many applications have in common (usually represented by menu selections). If hooks to each one are available, use them; if not, add them.
If you think about it, Bluetooth works a lot like this.
Maybe the moderators will consider opening a subsection here for cooperative precompetitive development - perhaps even sub-subsections on specific initiatives with a lot of common interests.
I might also add, from what little I know about the ISV team at RIM, I think they would be open to embracing some of this into later versions of the O/S.
But right now, I urge everybody to think about getting nit started right here.
(And I'm just a dumb writer).
Precompetitive standards
