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App Challenge - Exclusiveness of apps to Tizen

Hi Tizen community!

I've read through all the T&Cs for the Tizen app challenge, but I'm still a little confused about whether some restrictions apply at all.

Can anybody who has created an app made for a different mobile platform simply port it to Tizen and enter it into the app challenge?

 

The spirit of the challenge sounds like it should be to make an app specifically for Tizen, but there are so many good apps out there for other mobile platforms with most of the work already done. If those apps were simply re-written to work well on Tizen, it seems to me that they would have a much greater chance of winning than anyone creating new apps specifically for Tizen that are being made from scratch. That doesn't seem like the spirit of competition to me.

If apps were judged with a bias towards exclusiveness to Tizen, then at least that would encourage developers to make something new. Otherwise I could see apps similar to Candy Crush Saga dominating this competition and the more risky innovative apps that might not have tried and tested designs left in the shadows.

If there was something to say that apps made specifically for Tizen would be looked on favourably, I'm sure the competition would have a much more exciting outcome. It's possible that I missed something about the rules/judging so if I did, please correct me.

 

Otherwise I'd appreciate an answer about apps needing to be exclusive to Tizen for the challenge from somebody who actually knows the answer. Thanks for your help.

 

TeamSteeve

Edited by: Brock Boland on 17 Mar, 2014 Reason: Paragraph tags added automatically from tizen_format_fix module.
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Responses

9 Replies
John Ixion
"Can anybody who has created an app made for a different mobile platform simply port it to Tizen and enter it into the app challenge?" Yes :)
John Ixion
but "it must not have any current or future monetary, proprietary, or licensed external dependencies."
Steven Cutcliffe
So that last part means that the app must be free, not use in-app purchases or any other type of payment methods, have no licensing system, requires nothing external to actually work, and can't have any of those things ever, even after the challenge is over? Is that correct? Because that's what I read it as.
John Ixion
I'm not a lawyer but this restriction is only about "external dependencies".
John Ixion
An ebook reader which reads only Amazon books for instance is not allowed imo
I think you sould ask Brian Warner here www.mail-archive.com/general@lists.tizen.org/ He announced the challenge and he replies to any email about it You can see his name at the top https://www.tizen.org/blogs/bdub/2013/tizen-app-challenge-now-open He has been already asked about challenge limitation to 22 countries and said Law issues prevents them. Probably he knows more than anyone else
Brian Warner
Brian here :-) Yes, I can confirm that the goal of the App Challenge is to encourage app developers to develop or port awesome apps to Tizen, and get them submitted and certified in the Tizen Store. There's no issue at all with porting and submitting an app from another platform, so long as you have the rights to do so.  In fact, there are some extra prizes for HTML5 apps, which are (or at least should be) cross platform.  Also, many developers are using third party game/physics engines to create apps - Unity announced at the Tizen Developer Conference that they would be offering a one-click export to a Tizen target. All of these encourage cross-platform portability.  So long as all the other criteria for entering (section 6 of the T&Cs) have been met, an app can be entered. For info on the judging criteria, please see section 9 of the T&Cs.  Also, you may want to check out the third paragraph of section 4: https://developer.tizen.org/contests/tizen-app-challenge/terms-and-conditions Hope this helps. Edit: Grammar is hard.
Laurensius Tony

so is there any way my current game in unity or similiar engine to be ported to tizen platform?  also i see that unity support build into web player and google native client so since tizen also can run html5 games and apps can i just build into web player or google native client and it will work into tizen device or maybe let me attend the tizen app challenge

Steven Cutcliffe
@Nour Saffaf - Yeah, Brian's obviously on the ball. Plus I'd rather post on the forum where anybody else wanting the same answers can find them easily. @Brian Warner - Thanks for your answer Brian. Ha, yeah I won't be using Unity. Why use an engine made for 3D games when 2D games work much better for a mobile platform? YoYo Game's GameMaker:Studio engine also has a one-click Tizen export, is much easier to use than Unity, is much cheaper than Unity, is fantastic in terms of speed and features, and has the best communication between the company and developers that I've ever experienced. Unity is popular, but by far not the best tool for 2D games. I have read all the documentation that I can find about the challenge, but I just wanted to make sure I'm interpreting it correctly. If you could take a look at my last reply in this thread and let me know if the way I'm interpreting it is correct or not, I'd be greatly appreciative. Thanks again. :)