Looking over the Palm Pre SDK terms:
4.2 Application Signing. Developer acknowledges and agrees that Applications which access or make use of Palm’s APIs may not be installed or used on Palm Devices, except in a test environment, without first being signed with a certificate issued by or for Palm. Developer acknowledges and agrees that the method under which such certificates will be issued, and Developer’s ability to distribute such Applications for use with Palm Devices will be subject to further terms and conditions, which may include additional fees for application signing. Such terms and conditions shall be presented to Developer upon or before Developer’s request for issuance of a certificate for any Application.
4.3 Applications Can Only Be Distributed Through the Palm Application Catalog. Developer acknowledges and agrees, that absent a separate written agreement with Palm, Developer may not distribute any Application except as allowed by Palm’s formal approved distribution process and channel (the “Application Catalog”). Developer acknowledges and agrees that (a) distribution of Applications will be subject to further terms and conditions, which may include a share of the revenue generated from sale of the Applications to be paid to Palm by Developer, where such terms and conditions shall be presented to Developer upon or before Developer’s request for distribution of any Application, (b) because of certain laws, regulations, as well as contractual or other restrictions, Palm may refuse to allow the distribution of certain types of Applications, and (c) distributed Applications may be viewable or inspectable by third parties, and Palm is not obligated to take any steps to obfuscate the code associated with the Applications or take any other steps to prevent third parties from viewing or inspecting Application code.
Remember those sites where you could grab Palm apps? Yeah, not any more. Heck, so much for hosting apps on your own web site for folks to grab. Palm has decided that the iTunes App Submission system is such a hit with developers that they're going to do the same thing. Oh yeah, and you may need to pony up, bucko. (My guess is that there's not going to be a lot of "free" apps if developers have to cover the signing costs out of pocket.)
Sigh… i had such hopes for this platform.
Ah well, off to grab the SDK anyway and see if there's anything useful in there.
