EDIT: Site's nuked for me. Main page cache from the fireballed.org site:
Sony’s Networked Application Platform is a project designed to leverage the open source community to build and evolve the next generation application framework for consumer electronic devices.
The developer program gives access to a developer community and resources like SDK, tools, documentation and other developers.
The foundation upon which this project is base comes from the GNUstep community, whose origin dates back to the OpenStep standard developed by NeXT Computer Inc (now Apple Computer Inc.). While Apple has continued to update their specification in the form of Cocoa and Mac OS X, the GNUstep branch of the tree has diverged considerably.
The GNUstep core libraries strictly adhere to the OpenStep standard and OPENSTEP implementation. They consider changes and additions to their API only under the following circumstances:
They add methods and classes, either from Cocoa or their own extensions, if they add substantial value and don't interfere with OpenStep and/or Cocoa compatibility.
They generally don't remove things unless there is a clearly better implementation in newer Cocoa API
Where there is a real problem with a change, they will attempt find a technically superior work-around. In rare cases, this might involve a change in the original OpenStep API
We depart somewhat from the GNUstep adherence in that our goal is to thoroughly modernize the framework and optimize it to target modern consumer electronic (CE) devices. These modern conveniences include such features as touch displays and 3D graphics.
I'm sure they aren't writing another phone OS, but what devices exactly are they targeting? TVs, set-top boxes, MP3 players?
I loved the hardware of a Sony MP3 a bought a couple of years ago but it was ruined by absolutely atrocious syncing software. I hope this means they open up their interfaces a little more and let other people integrate with their products.
PlayStation 4. It's a Good Thing, but I've been overly optimistic about Sony adopting a policy of greater openness before. IIRC devices classed as computers incur lower import charges in the EU than devices classed as entertainment accessories (ie games/toys). Hence Linux on PS2, PS3, and...?PS4? So far, this has been something of a letdown after launch.
Sony had, a long time ago, a family of Unix workstations. At that time, those systems were called "open" in the sense that they played well with other systems over documented protocols.
"SNAP stands for Sony's Networked Application Platform and is the early stage of a new ecosystem for making downloadable 3rd party applications available to networked devices like TVs, Blu-ray Disk players, etc."
I got approximately 1.5 pages of their server to load. I think it's being used for "smart" TVs first. It sounds like they're trying to build an Apple-free dev environment familiar to Apple dev's.
Quoth the raven:
SNAP is a completely open-source licensed (for license details click here) development environment based on GNUstep.
Historically, GNUstep is based on the OpenStep specification developed by NeXT (now Apple Computer Inc.) plus additional extensions added by Apple through the Cocoa framework. SNAP is an extension of this framework created by Sony and will take a big step forward in evolving a new application framework.
The initial areas of enhancement target the windowing system and graphic framework but further modifications and refinements address networking, widgets, UI building, 3D graphics, file system, garbage collection, performance and execution size. The overall goal of the SNAP project is to develop and evolve a next generation native application framework for embedded devices. While SNAP does not currently target a specific hardware platform or product, the long-term goal is to enable SNAP on Consumer Electronic (CE) devices.
It will be interesting to see transition difficulty from one implementation to the other.
At the very least, Linux is going to get a serious push for GNUStep, and a ton more dev's if it works out.
http://fireballed.org/linked/2010/11/24/snap/
EDIT: Site's nuked for me. Main page cache from the fireballed.org site:
Sony’s Networked Application Platform is a project designed to leverage the open source community to build and evolve the next generation application framework for consumer electronic devices.
The developer program gives access to a developer community and resources like SDK, tools, documentation and other developers.
The foundation upon which this project is base comes from the GNUstep community, whose origin dates back to the OpenStep standard developed by NeXT Computer Inc (now Apple Computer Inc.). While Apple has continued to update their specification in the form of Cocoa and Mac OS X, the GNUstep branch of the tree has diverged considerably.
The GNUstep core libraries strictly adhere to the OpenStep standard and OPENSTEP implementation. They consider changes and additions to their API only under the following circumstances:
They add methods and classes, either from Cocoa or their own extensions, if they add substantial value and don't interfere with OpenStep and/or Cocoa compatibility. They generally don't remove things unless there is a clearly better implementation in newer Cocoa API Where there is a real problem with a change, they will attempt find a technically superior work-around. In rare cases, this might involve a change in the original OpenStep API
We depart somewhat from the GNUstep adherence in that our goal is to thoroughly modernize the framework and optimize it to target modern consumer electronic (CE) devices. These modern conveniences include such features as touch displays and 3D graphics.