QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's an RPi image

Re:QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's... by hinkley on Thursday November 07, 2024 @06:18PM (#42082223)

One of the dirty secrets of the mobile industry, particularly before Apple showed up and spoiled all the fun, was how many execs and chunks of the ethos were airlifted out of Ma Bell. The kind of moat-building we're seeing take over the internet over the last couple decades is something that mobile carriers already had in heaps.

It was also common for carriers to extort very high fees from anyone selling apps on their platforms. People bitch and moan about Apple taking 30% (which is more like 15% now) but I saw mobile app execs complaining about only grossing 30% after the carrier fees, and so you could only either make blockbusters and pay for R&D on volume, or set your VC money on fire to fatten up the carriers and get nothing, except more powerful carriers, for your efforts.

I'm not at all surprised to hear that RIM was only slightly less evil.

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Re:QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's... by tdeck on Thursday November 07, 2024 @10:05PM (#42083708)

I remember getting some LG phone in maybe 2007 and being excited because I read you could write 3rd party apps and games for it. Then I tried reading the BREW developer docs and trying the emulator, which were both abysmal. Then I read that just to try an app on my phone I would need to pay hundreds of dollars (IIRC it was $400) to get it signed.

That totally killed my desire to develop for my flip phone.

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Re:QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's... by mikepurvis on Thursday November 07, 2024 @11:28PM (#42084138)

It's crazy to think that that's an ecosystem where paying a dollar or more for a ringtone had been normalized.

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Re:QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's... by ethbr1 on Thursday November 07, 2024 @11:49PM (#42084256)

If you look up the music industy revenue source breakdowns by year, there was a time when ringtone revenue represented 10%.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/music-industry-revenues-by-...

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Re:QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's... by blackoil on Friday November 08, 2024 @12:03AM (#42084318)

Was this North America specific. I remember using sdk/dev tools for Symbian. I don't remember timelines, so maybe they changed after iPhone release.

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Re:QNX is now free for anything non-commercial, plus there's... by jampekka on Friday November 08, 2024 @03:37AM (#42085308)

If I recall correctly the Symbian SDK was freely available more or less from the Psion start. Not sure about it's different "editions" though.

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