Monday, November 12, 2007
What's wrong with Italian developers?
From the Android Developer Challenge FAQ:The Android Developer Challenge is open to individuals, teams of individuals, and business entities. While we seek to make the Challenge open worldwide, we cannot open the Challenge to residents of Cuba, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Sudan, and Myanmar (Burma) because of U.S. laws. In addition, the Challenge is not open to residents of Italy or Quebec because of local restrictions.Ok, I can take the axis of evil are out of the cash prizes for building Android applications, but what is wrong with the residents of Italy?? What did the Italian government do, this time? Or is it a plot to leave out the best mobile developers in the world (apologies for the developers of Quebec, with whom my fellow Italian developers supposedly share bad local restrictions...)?
[NOTE ADDED AFTER THE POST]
One of the Italian readers of this blog added a comment, pointing to the explanation by Fabrizio Giudici. In a nutshell, the Italian government adds so many rules - and requires Google to put a security deposit of $10M in the Italian banks - that kill the ability for Italians to compete with the rest of the world. Quite sad. These are the days when I am glad Funambol is incorporated in Delaware ;-)
[NOTE ADDED A WEEK AFTER THE POST]
One of the readers added a comment pointing me to this article in "Il Punto Informatico" (in Italian, sorry). Carefully reading the Italian law - which is never easy ;-) - it appears that maybe Google has been overcautious, because there seems to be an exclusion for "scientific art" (which must included software, in particular if developed by Italians :-) . I contacted the Italians in Google I know and they told me they are working on it... Let's hope we'll get the country back on track. The economy needs the $10M prizes...
Posted by Fabrizio at 22:24
6 Comments:
Leonardo said...
Hi Fabrizio,
I agree with you... it's a really bad thing that italian mobile developers cannot join the contest!
I would love to have more details about this!
Why? Google or Italian Government?
Leonardo
Comment Posted at 08:47
paoloc said...
I think you'll find the answer to your question here:
http://weblogs.java.net/blog/fabriziogiudici/archive/2007/11/google_android.html
You might wonder what are those "local restrictions". Well, for my country:
* prizes must be assigned in presence of a notary public and a representative from an acknowledged consumer association;
* prizes that are not delivered (for any reason, including recipient not picking them) must be donated to some non-profit organizations, explicitly listed in the contest rules;
* there are some papers to fill in and the contest must be registered to two different Ministries (you know, in Italy there are a lot of Ministries, sometimes it's hard to understand who's doing what) and to the State Monopoly Administration.
Comment Posted at 09:02
OK, case Italy is "not entirely surpising". Sadly.
What is the case with Quebec?
Comment Posted at 02:40
Fabrizio said...
Who knows? Maybe they just did not wanted to leave the Italians alone ;-)
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 08:32
Nicolò said...
Hi fabrizio, maybe the italian law is not that bad: read here
http://www.lastampa.it/_web/CMSTP/tmplrubriche/giornalisti/grubrica.asp?ID_blog=88&ID_articolo=75&ID_sezione=159&sezione=Centro%20Messaggi
Comment Posted at 08:38
Fabrizio said...
Ciao Nicolo',
if this is the case, then I will take it on to Google here. In particular, to the Google Italians ;-)
fabrizio
