Kindle Source Code Release: What Does It Mean?

This is an interesting surprise to me. Amazon released their source code for all the Kindle devices. What does it mean?

• Will we see competing hardware devices running clones or forks of the Kindle source?
• If we do see 3rd party devices, will their users be able to buy from the Amazon Kindle store?
• Will we see Kindle software solutions for existing hardware platforms? Amazon's already released Kindle for iPhone (which I use). Will we see other vendors use it too?
• Will this allow other retailers to sell Kindle ebooks from their site directly to other devices?
• Could new Kindle clones or stores mean DRM-free Kindle books?

This is surprising to me when I try to look at it from Amazon's business perspective. They controlled the device and the channel in the existing model, I'm not sure what they think they had to gain. I wonder if this is in some way tied to the Kindle DX textbook trials announced recently, and maybe they felt that they needed to open the platform to avoid the appearances of the beginning of an ebook monopoly?

From a customer perspective, it's a huge win if this drives down the cost of Kindle hardware. And maybe Amazon's win is making the hardware ubiquitous at someone else's expense to drive more Kindle book sales.

As always, these musing are purely my own. Even though I work in a company that sells a lot of books through Amazon, I don't have any direct knowledge of their business decisions.

Updated 6/17/09: Thanks Eric for pointing out (see comment) that the original Kindle and Kindle 2 source have been available a while and that all that's new here is the DX code. I wonder then if anyone knows of any 3rd party apps, devices, or sites making use of this source yet?

Comments

[Eric]

Um... If I'm not mistaken, the Kindle 1 and 2 source has been there for quite a while. It's just the DX source release that's new.

Also, it's not complete. There are portions of their proprietary book-viewing code that's not included.

So, this isn't some sort of policy shift. Just an update given the recent release of the DX.