Windows Phone 7: ChevronWP7 no longer available

The ChevronWP7 which opened the way for the downloading of mobile applications outside of Windows Marketplace has been removed from download by its authors.

Last Thursday we wrote about the existence of a mobile application, ChevronWP7, which allowed you to install applications on a Windows Phone 7 Smartphone which didn’t come through the normally obligatory Windows Phone Marketplace.

Its authors initially confirmed that this would allow users to create their own applications (homebrew) without having to pass via the Microsoft developers program (with its subscription fee).

Criticisms quickly emerged about the application, with the word being that it would surely contribute to application piracy, with a loss of revenue for developers. The software developers made a slight update to their policy stating that their application only exploited functions already present on the mobile OS, without making any changes, and that the Marketplace applications were locked with their inbuilt security preventing their installation outside of their planned context (even if it was well known that such locks generally don’t hold out for very long).


Homebrew is good for Windows Phone 7
On their side, Microsoft quickly reacted to the arrival of this software, stating that this scenario had already been anticipated, and recommended that users avoid its installation. Since then, the authors of Chevron WP7 have indicated that they have been in direct discussions with Microsoft about their interest in offering official Homebrew applications.

Their argument is that this will surely attract users and developers to the Windows Phone 7 platform by making it more open. For the negotiations to move forward in a timely manner and without any underlying tensions, the authors of ChevronWP7 have decided that they would no longer make the applications available for download.

We will have to see whether Microsoft is now willing to open the system. In the meantime, a first Homebrew application, a sound manager, has been made available, along with its source code.