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Samsung Really, Really Wants Developers To Build Tizen Apps (theinquirer.net) 122

Posted by msmash from the do-it-already dept.
Samsung wants developers to build apps for its homegrown Tizen mobile operating system, and it is offering cash prizes to do so. From a report on The Inquirer:The firm has launched the Tizen Mobile App Incentive Programme, which offers devs whose apps feature in the top 100 most downloaded rankings (can't be that hard, surely) a $10,000 reward. The firm will pay up to $1m a month from February to September 2017, Samsung said, making a total of $9m up for grabs. Developers will be able to sign up for the Tizen incentive programme from January 2017, and the firm explained that applications must be developed using the Tizen SDK and aimed at the Tizen-powered Samsung Z1, Z2 and Z3.
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Samsung Really, Really Wants Developers To Build Tizen Apps More

Samsung Really, Really Wants Developers To Build Tizen Apps

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  • Noted... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    We Really, Really don't give a fuck about yet another proprietary and/or Tivo-ized OS...

    • By proprietary, if you mean 'belongs to a company', that is right. If you mean it's not open source, then you're wrong, since it is Linux. Since Replicant hasn't been hitting the shelves, good luck finding a non TiVo-ized OS

      Speaking of which, even Android is TiVo-ized, since you can't install your modified version of Android on your phone w/o breaking things

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nmb3000 ( 741169 )

        Speaking of which, even Android is TiVo-ized, since you can't install your modified version of Android on your phone w/o breaking things

        Just "breaking things" isn't what makes something Tivoized. It's when the system is designed to prevent executing custom or modified code through the use of something like digital signatures. A locked phone which normally runs a modified version of GNU/Linux and also refuses to execute code that isn't signed by the carrier would be an example of Tivoized hardware, but the Android software itself isn't Tivoized at all.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Dog-Cow ( 21281 )

          Tivo-ized refers to the using of Open Source software and preventing the update of said software on the Tivo-ized device. How is your standard Android phone not a perfect example of this?

          You are stupid beyond measure.

    • Let's not forget that the tizen SDK license is an abomination that goes so fast as to sign all your hard work over to Samsung if you use it.
    • I never understood the constant whining about "Tivo-ization". The software is FOSS, whether the hardware it is sold with covers your needs is irrelevant. This is why companies (and most individuals) don't care about "free software" and just stick to the letter of the licenses. You can't really win because the rules of the game are constantly being changed by the FSF. Recently they attack Debian for having proprietary drivers *in the repositories* (aka as an optional download not necessary to run the OS). No

  • Begun... (Score:3)

    by technomom ( 444378 ) on Monday November 14, 2016 @01:58PM (#53283223)

    Begun the fart app wars have.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday November 14, 2016 @02:03PM (#53283285)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Huh, it's weird pretending Apple doesn't exist.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        Not on the Android OS

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Apple intentionally doesn't compete in large segments of the market. There is no budget iPhone. The 'cheap' iPhone is £379. New Android phones start at about £50 and you can get some pretty decent ones for £100-200. Apple provides good competition for the top 20% or so of the market, but that still leaves Android largely uncontested for 70-80% of the market.

    • Tizen offers precisely nothing that Android doesn't already have, apart from lock-in to Samsung's eco system, with it's also-ran alternatives to things Google/Android already does far better (S-Voice is garbage, for instance).

      I had one Tizen device, a Gear S watch. As soon as Android Wear arrived, I got rid of it.

      • Re:Please let Tizen succeed (Score:5, Interesting)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <`slashdot' `at' `worf.net'> on Monday November 14, 2016 @02:33PM (#53283577)

        Tizen offers precisely nothing that Android doesn't already have, apart from lock-in to Samsung's eco system, with it's also-ran alternatives to things Google/Android already does far better (S-Voice is garbage, for instance).

        Tizen is also a nightmare to program for.

        Tizen is just an OS, but the underlying foundation is E! (Enlightenment, if you're not up to date on your old fancy X window managers), or more correctly, the E Foundation Libraries (similar to ones like QT and GNOME).

        And if you've never done E!, well, someone more eloquent has stated the numerous issues with it.

        https://what.thedailywtf.com/t... [thedailywtf.com]

        • wow. E! had a lot of configurability, but I never successfully set up a work environment in it (this was probably around E! 15 or 16 I think... been around 8 years). I can't imagine using it for mobile. Never got low level enough to work with the Foundation Libs. Sounds like I lucked out.

          • The Foundation Libs never existed 8 years ago. Or at least a stable version of them didn't. They were gestating in the CVS repository for over ten years.

            Enlightenment 0.16 has been around since, er, 1999 or so, and its only non-standard dependency was Imlib2.

            Enlightenment DR17, the first version to be based on EFL, was only released in 2012.

        • Tizen is also a nightmare to program for.

          It's just X windows isn't it? I guess you have to use E for some interfacing, but otherwise, its XCreateSimpleWindow() all the way!

          I actually like X.

        • Was reading the API documentation and was like "Hello 1992". And I thought Symbian was bad.

          • I had a chat with a few of the developers at FOSDEM a few years ago. They were very proud of their new object model and IDL that they thought would make it easy for people to attach scripting languages and create bindings for other languages. It had never occurred to them that 'char*' is not enough type information for a useful binding to another language (is it for input, output, or both? Is it null terminated, or is it's length passed in another parameter? Is it actually an array of characters [and, i

        • As soon as I saw "Tizen" in the headline, the article you linked is the first thing that came to my mind. I once had a passing interesting in Tizen development but resources/information/community help for developers is scant. Google searching will eventually lead you to the linked article and turn anyone sensible off of Tizen, IMO. These days, I'm trying to do everything with C++ (my most familiar language, but I'm not a programmer by trade), Qt, and Python.

        • And if you've never done E!, well, someone more eloquent has stated the numerous issues with it.

          Ecstacy's had a bad rap
          The drug's OK but the music's crap
          Techno's made with computer cable
          Sampling machine and an old turntable
          Get a loop, then cut and paste her
          Buy a trip and lick the paper
          There's new school, old school, prep school too
          There's DJs that nobody knew
          But now they're known - for doing what?
          Ideas? Music? Melody? Nup.
          They don't sing, they're not able.
          They put a record on a turntable.
          - TISM, Fatboy Slim Dusty

    • If they want it to succeed they should make the API compatible with Android. There's already too many incompatible mobile OS's. Look at all the wasted effort developers have to do writing two versions of the app, one for iOS and one for android.

    • Samsung is not exactly making an effort in making it succeed. The three phones listed are for the Indian market only.

      That being said, $10k is a lot of money in India.

  • Where are the developer phones? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 14, 2016 @02:09PM (#53283351)

    If Samsung wants developers to make Tizen apps, Samsung should be putting Tizen phones in the hands of developers.

    • Re:Where are the developer phones? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Monday November 14, 2016 @02:18PM (#53283459) Homepage

      They must have a large stockpile of Galaxy Note 7's somewhere.

      Surely they could give those away.

      (assuming they can run whatever this "Tizen" thing is)

    • Speaking of which, are the Galaxy phones Tizens? I have no idea about the Samsung landscape, since my Android toys are a Moto X and a Verizon Ellipsis
    • Exactly. HP sent me a free TouchPad, which at least meant that I ported some libraries to run on it. I'd probably have done more if they hadn't killed the platform completely shortly afterwards. I got a Nokia 770s with a 60% (I think - maybe slightly more) discount from their open source developers' program when they were new and did a few things on that (although it didn't have enough RAM to be very useful - nice portable machine for running vim though).

  • Advice (Score:4, Funny)

    by c ( 8461 ) <beauregardcp@gmail.com> on Monday November 14, 2016 @02:11PM (#53283369)

    Talk to (or just buy) BlackBerry. I'm sure they'd be a wealth of information on how to woo Android developers.

  • Do we really need another mobile operating system in the ecosystem? Unless this one offers the stability that Android currently lacks, I am totally not interested.
    • What we all need is open hardware APIs - so you can choose the OS you actually want, on the hardware you want. Presumably we don't have this already because the HW manufacturers are afraid people will find out how crap their HW is.

      Eventually, some of the hardware people will realise that once they have amortized their dev costs, the marginal cost of the same part is close to zero, and someone will start releasing "bog standard" hardware. With several OSes able to support it, the OSes will specialise (Like

  • If Samsung really wants that... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tough Love ( 215404 ) on Monday November 14, 2016 @02:19PM (#53283469)

    If Samsung really wants that, how about making Tizen actual open source instead of pretend open source?

    • There is a huge cult following on the NX1 as the hardware is amazing but the closed source firmware is hampering the progress

    • ...is not so good [vanityfair.com]. Such an app store is more likely to abuse developers than Apple or Google (who themselves are no angels).

      ...Some Samsung executives saw a path for boosting profits by boldly and illegally fixing prices with competitors in some of their top businesses... competitors secretly got together in what they called “Glass Meetings” at hotels and resorts around the world... Samsung was fined $32 million in the U.S., $21.5 million in South Korea, and $197 million by the European Commissi

    • If Samsung wants to compete with Android, why not make an Android compatible ecosystem. Build their own "Play store" and "play services" so to speak. Support some already existing, or create new android development tools. Say, based on Eclipse (or similar). If Android developers can use their existing skills and code to easily build apps for another ecosystem (like Amazons!), then they also could for Samsung's.

      This would effectively compete with Google. Using the very developers that write for Googl

      • Who in their right mind would ever implement a Java-based API on their smartphone given the Oracle-Google lawsuit?

  • Well, at least they seem to be putting more effort into it than Microsoft did for mobile. :P
    We really don't need more proprietary competing platforms in the wearable, mobile and IoT market.
    I'd be all for Tizen if it was open source, but at this point it just sounds to me like the horrible crap software they put on smart tvs.
    They are all fast outdated, after developers put out the first stable version they never update the software anymore, and it's a horrible experience in comparison to almost anything else

  • Let it dual boot stock (Score:3)

    by Hydrian ( 183536 ) on Monday November 14, 2016 @02:38PM (#53283639) Homepage

    If Samsung wants developers and users play with Tizen, why don't they have all / most of their phones dual boot with both android and tizen as the alternate. The people who aren't interested won't probably even notice it is there. The developer and power users will be able to start playing with it and possibly gain interest / marketshare.

    • I still bet the people who won't notice that Tizen is there *WILL* notice the large amount of storage it uses, and will gripe about it.
  • All those apps will no doubt allow its phone to explode into new markets.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 )

      And developers have a burning desire to capture those markets. Mobile development, in general, is so hot right now -- almost too hot.

  • Right now, the "two" are Android and Apple. Blackberry has fallen off, and Microsoft never really had a serious chance at the mobile market share. I really can't imagine what Tizen would have to offer. Apps? That's what they're going for here? Are there not already enough on the other chosen platforms? Maybe I'm pessimistic, but I think it's just far too late for a company to expect to be a major player in mobile device operating systems.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by xvan ( 2935999 )
      At least on the Maemo hype the argument was that you could trivially port all the existing linux libs, then just redesing the GUI.
      It's a good Idea, but if there's no money there won't good / attractive GUIs (linux is ugly, embedded linux is worse).

  • From Validation Guidelines [tizen.org]:

    Application should cover the entire screen of a device.

    This is likely to prove inconvenient to users as Samsung expands Tizen from phones to larger devices such as tablets. Enjoy your 10-inch four-function calculator.

    Another set of three rules taken together would make several kinds of video game impractical to develop for Tizen. There are four ways to display a game on a device that supports multiple orientations:

    A. Force an orientation. This is common on both iOS and Android but

    • This is likely to prove inconvenient to users as Samsung expands Tizen from phones to larger devices such as tablets. Enjoy your 10-inch four-function calculator.

      Actually, not so much. It's a guideline, but actually Tizen uses some alien technology which has allowed for multiple, overlapping windows since 1987. The WM can just say (and I quote from the ICCCM) "fuck you window you're resized motherfucker" and then reparent the crap out of the window.

    • > Content must not disparage a person or a group of people on the basis of [...] Ideology

      Technically, that would even invalidate Kindle or iBook or any Ebook reader.
      Actually, that will even invalidate a web browser!

  • When smartphone temperature exceeds 60 degrees, the app activates the GPS and sends the coordinates to the fire brigade.

  • Also (Score:2)

    by dohzer ( 867770 )

    It probably also really, really want's people to use Tizen, but that ain't happening.

  • ...
    1.) offer an open and flexible FOSS mobile OS.
    2.) offer an open and flexible mobile development FOSS toolchain.
    3.) offer a range of non-locked, battery replacable, non-artificially memory/performance castrated handsets and tablets on which to install said OS and apps.

    Provide that and I'm switching to Samsung and Tizen inmediately.

    Until that happens though, I'm sticking with Android and affordable Motorola Handsets, thank you.

  • Perhaps Google needs to do the same (Score:3)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Monday November 14, 2016 @04:11PM (#53284431) Journal
    Seriously, they might want to make sure that the same or better apps end up in Android space.

  • Tizen? Don't make me laugh (Score:3)

    by StevenMaurer ( 115071 ) on Tuesday November 15, 2016 @12:45AM (#53287291) Homepage

    I worked on a contract in which an auto manufacturer was trying to use that abomination, and we could never even get the source to compile. Literally a year later, it came out that Samsung was trying to use both git/gerrit and Perforce as version control for it [thedailywtf.com], mixed between different teams:

    Time went by and Bad Things started to appear. Git/gerrit was official in some teams, but Perforce was official in other teams (even working on the same component). Some patches went there, some there. The management finally decided Perforce code should be used as THE source for building OS images. Again, they only forgot to tell everyone else to stop using git

    Both repositories diverged to the point of being almost incompatible. Issues in Perforce code were given to git teams, which resulted in a litany of WTFs. After all, there’s not many things more fun than being tasked with fixing a bug in code that you physically don’t have. ASAP. Meetings took place, arrangements were made to rectify the situation. Months later, the situation is still the same.

    One implication was code review process. With gerrit in place, that was a non-issue. But the Korean teams didn’t (and still don’t) understand the notion of code review and pushed everything directly to the repo. The quality of some patches was so bad that enforcing code review became top priority for non-Korean teams. Finally, a solution was developed – MS Word based code review. Each changeset needs to be attached to a bug in the tracker. Each bug can have a Word document attached with a request for code review. That document is a three pages long form with information so useless, nobody even wants to read it. At the end there’s a place for copy-pasting a diff for each file changed, with the explanation why. Reviewers are supposed to fill a Word form with details about which line they comment on and what their issue with it is.

    Submitting a patch, clicking through the awful issue tracker and filling the form takes literal hours. All this because using git with gerrit was too tough. Fortunately, the review form has fields listing times taken by various steps in fixing a bug. Maybe someday someone will read how long pushing the code actually takes.

    No, they won’t.

    Luckily, that contract was short term. But because I put it on my resume, I got a few head-hunters inquiring about it. Quickly though, interest waned. Not hard to see why...

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