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Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 13:41:03 -0700
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 <CAASJe78F6LgQsk8Fia5fgEzjokEHNYgy3_2TtnNxqo++=yAuMQ@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Sending BB7 to the farm
From: Lorin Beer <lorin.beer.dev@gmail.com>
To: dev <dev@cordova.apache.org>
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Absolutely Marcel,

although, the impetus behind dropping BB is not the usage numbers, but the
lack of interest in future support beyond maintenance. We want our efforts
to go towards BB10 development.

My understanding is that older blackberry's are hugely popular devices in
countries we may not immediately consider, like Nigeria.

I think the important thing to take away is that users wanting to develop
apps for older generation BlackBerry devices will still be able to, just
not with Cordova 3.0 +.

- Lorin


On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 1:33 PM, Marcel Kinard <cmarcelk@gmail.com> wrote:

> While I'm as happy as the next person to see old versions go away, perhaps
> something else should be considered when making these decisions: country
> usage may not reflect global averages.
>
> For example, I recently was in discussion with some folks in a large Asia
> country regarding iOS 4.3. Apparently iOS 4.3 is much more widely used
> there than in North America / Europe, it's not a rounding error. As it was
> explained to me, it is common for users to not upgrade the OS on their
> phones there to the latest & greatest, it's part of the user behavior /
> culture.
>
> So the relavant question I'd ask is how popular is BB7 in someplace like
> Canada? According to
> http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-CA-monthly-201305-201305-bar the
> total BB usage looks to currently be around 10%. It's unclear what portion
> is BB6 vs BB7 vs BB10. Are we OK with dropping that population?
>
> Our 5% threshold may be hiding some of the story when we look only at a
> single global number.
>
> -- Marcel Kinard
>
> On May 9, 2013, at 4:32 PM, Filip Maj <fil@adobe.com> wrote:
>
> > +1 sunsetting BB7
> >
> > On 5/8/13 8:58 AM, "Don Coleman" <don.coleman@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> I'd be happy to see BB7 go away.  It seems like 3.0 could drop support,
> >> especially if BlackBerry is concentrating on 10 and not releasing
> webworks
> >> updates.
> >>
> >> I have a client asking for support BB7 along with Android and iOS.  This
> >> probably means that I have a cordova-cli project and a separate BB7
> build
> >> and keep BB7 on PhoneGap 2.x.
> >>
> >>
> >> On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 10:56 AM, Bryan Higgins
> >> <bhiggins@blackberry.com>wrote:
> >>
> >>> It is fair to say that our team is focused solely on BB10. The WebWorks
> >>> SDK
> >>> for BBOS itself has no future planned releases.
> >>>
> >>> One point I should clear up is the new blackberry10 platform code we're
> >>> introducing does not cover PlayBook as well. The PlayBook runs
> TabletOS,
> >>> which while built on qnx does not as of yet have binary compatibility
> >>> with
> >>> BB10. Our CEO has said BB10 for PlayBook is in development, but there
> >>> have
> >>> been no official announcements regarding a release.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 10:27 AM, Lorin Beer <lorin.beer.dev@gmail.com
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Don's question regarding a BB7 roadmap yesterday made me realize that
> >>> we
> >>>> don't have one. Concentrating on BB10/Playbook has caused us ignore
> >>> BB7.
> >>>>
> >>>> A little while ago, BB7 was discussed in terms of sending her off to
> >>> the
> >>>> farm/attic/(silicon afterlife). The decision was reached that we
> >>> should
> >>>> keep up support.
> >>>>
> >>>> I believe BlackBerry's stance is that they are not interested in
> >>>> maintaining the BB7 Cordova implementation. Ken, Bryan, jump in here
> >>> and
> >>>> correct me if I'm wrong.
> >>>>
> >>>> There is a lot of work involved in getting BB7 to the 3.0.0 cli stage,
> >>> and
> >>>> if the plan is to drop support for the platform entirely within the
> >>> next
> >>> 6
> >>>> months, I don't see that this work is justified.
> >>>>
> >>>> Deprecation policy is 3 releases now, which means 3.1.0 is the
> >>> soonest we
> >>>> can drop it.
> >>>>
> >>>> Given that :
> >>>> - Brett on PhoneGap build has described the BB7 usage statistic as
> >>> "noise"
> >>>> - no new jira tickets are submitted for BB7 unless it's by our team
> >>>>
> >>>> I propose that we :
> >>>>
> >>>> 1. keep BB7 pre-cli maintenance mode regardless of how many releases
> >>> it
> >>>> sticks around for
> >>>>
> >>>> 2. announce BB7 deprecation and drop BB7 before the 3.0.0 release
> >>>>
> >>>> The reasoning for 2 is to not pollute the 3.0 release with legacy code
> >>>> which is not CLI compliant. I realize that this contravenes our
> >>> deprecation
> >>>> policy, but I think the level of interest in BB7 may let us get away
> >>> with
> >>>> it.
> >>>>
> >>>> - Lorin
> >>>>
> >>>
> >
>
>

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