Ignoring the expected language-wars comments for a second, this is actually really cool. These were solid, expensive pieces of software that will now reach a wider audience. Netbeans (which I don't use much) was always better than Eclipse in at least this one way - visually building GUIs. It will be nice to see Eclipse achieve parity or exceed its primary free rival in this regard, finally.

Excuse my ignorance, but to continue your supposedly improved analogy, if I post a comment that is nothing but spam, filled with links to malware, illegal torrents, or whatever, it doesn't get deleted, and /. readers can still see it? I would have expected otherwise, based simply on the potential legal repercussions & CYA policies... that's really what we're talking about, here - violations of law, or at least terms of service...

Hey, don't tell me, I know. But studies show people will basically answer "Yes" to anything, and there's no reason a BASIC level of scrutiny couldn't be applied to Android marketplace apps, especially those that do access account info, without going too far and blocking legitimate apps as Apple has. Actually, there is a reason, and I suppose it has to do with cost and trying to juxtaposition Android as the "open" alternative, but "open" doesn't have to mean "jam-packed with spam apps & sexy wallpaper crap that steals data if you're not careful"...

Bad, knee-jerk analogy - removing this application from the marketplace isn't "punishing the few" - who on Earth would ever want it? Policies to prevent similar apps would only be beneficial, so long as they were *sanely* implemented, and specifically addressed security/deceptive practices, not profanity, obscenity, etc. A basic level of review for security and some very OPEN standards would be a good thing. Doesn't /. moderate its comments for a reason??

I think it's time to explore the happy medium between the "Big Brother" Apple vision and the "Wild West" that is the Android marketplace... this is the type of bad PR that can & should change some policies.

... and share their ideas freely. No really: he does.

Look, Ray Kurzweil promised me that in ten years we'll all just be brains in jars hooked up to virtual intarwebs of nanomachines, so this whole exercise thing is moot; the singularity is sedentary.

I'm gonna have to try that much harder in 2010... I know that, through my own personal hard work and dedication, I can get that figure down to $6,199,999,900,000...

"Quality" can be both objective and subjective, and it seems this post is leaning towards the latter in terms of what it's getting at... while I believe in having formalized guidelines of some kind, I've found the best way to seek out and improve the elements that can't be easily quantified is through (drum roll) code reviews/walkthroughs. It seems like these are rare, at least where I'm at, and it's hard to get buy-in when you're talking about contractors charging by the hour, but in my opinion a single quality code review can save TONS of time down the road and is necessary for projects over a certain size. Also, read "The Pragmatic Programmer" and "Code Complete" for some of the best guidance on this topic.