Rhomobile chases 'write once run anywhere' dream
Published: 30 March, 2009
All the open mobile software players are chasing the nirvana of a technology that allows developers to write once and deploy their apps on most operating systems, making the current smartphone OS wars less relevant. Various implementations of Java go some what towards this, as do higher layer systems like Adobe Flash and AIR, but fragmentation remains. One of the smaller innovators chasing the dream is Rhomobile, which has devised an open source method for 'write once run anywhere', called Rhodes 1.0.
The start-up released the software on Friday under a dual-licensing model, a combination of free and commercial. Its framework enables programmers to write their apps in HTML and the simple open source language Ruby, and have the code execute on a wide range of phones, including those running Windows Mobile, Linux, BlackBerry, Symbian or iPhone OS X. In the PC web world, Ruby on Rails is the main framework for that language, and Rhodes is a lightweight version designed for mobile devices.
The company says that it has created a range of components for the framework that do the legwork for getting HTML and Ruby code on to different platforms. It uses the embedded browser components of the different mobile OSs, to ensure the apps conform to user interface guidelines and look attractive and usable on the phone.
The framework can be used for web-based apps, but Rhodes software can run natively on the handset, supporting more complex services that can tap into specific phone components such as its camera or sensors. Some features are not yet supported - the company is working on support for the iPhone's multitouch capabilities, and for the Palm Web OS.
Rhomobile believes its first market will be enterprises, whose internal programming efforts need to target many handsets within the workforce, says CNET. These corporate customers will pay a per-year license for Rhodes, while commercial software houses will pay up to 5% of any revenue generated from their Rhodes apps. Non-profit programmers will have to release their code as part of the open source project.
Rhomobile was founded last year by Adam Blum, a veteran of Mobio Networks and Good Technology, with seed capital from vSpring Capital. Its main competitor, it says, is Phonegap, which works on iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry, and uses JavaScript.
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