Notion Ink and Tabletroms - what is the working relation?

I have mentioned Tabletrom in the past, to the extent that but for the good people at Tabletroms, Adam would be dead by now. I think a lot of people share that sentiment - a look at a few threads there and in notionaddicts will show that.

Having said that, I believe that it is now crucial for Notion Ink to clearly spell out what their relation to Tabletroms is. NI is using a significant body of TR's work and TR, all said and done, is a hobby group. Most Notion Ink users are now reliant on the work done by a set of helpful programmers/hackers who have no legal obligation to do so.

consumer =========> Notion Ink<------------------Tabletroms

(buyers)                            (seller/commercial entity)         (hobby group)

What we have essentially is a commercial organization that takes money from buyers, and in turn depends on its OS release on a hobby organization. And that to me, from a risk analysis, is a red flag. I know from experience that hobby groups come and go, sourceforge has thousands of them. TR has no obligation to render its services but does purely from an altruistic perspective.

A few questions

- What happens if the talented developers at TR one day decide to do something else?

- What if there is an internal dispute on collaboration with NI?

- What happens if there are significant issues with NI release that are traced to TR code?

- What happens if NI users turn to TR for issues on NI release?

Some of these are not monumental issues when the user base is small, is technically-oriented, and will put up with issues, updates, wipe, resets and so on. It is a major issue however if this support link is cut off for whatever reason, or if the user base expands to less savvy users.

It then boils to that fundamental question - who stands behind the NI release and what happens if TR decides to focus elsewhere?

What agreements exist, if any, between the two entities? NI acknowledges TR's work on Rohan's blog post, but their website (NI's) gives no indication of a formal collaboration. If such a thing exists, given the critical role TR now plays (it's essentially their Honeycomb on NI Adam now), NI should mention the details of the relation and answer these questions.

I'd like to invite TR and NI to share their views on this - leave them in the comments or you can just email me on jksaur @ gmail . com. For fans of NI and TR, note that I'm not casting aspersions but asking what I believe to be fair questions to which answers must be clarified.

 

Update: Here is the most relevant response from a member of TR  (original thread here)

"Tabletroms is no different than any other Android development website and my relationship with NI is based purely that of respect and friendship. There is no formal collaboration or game plan, as you said this is our hobby and we do it for the joy it brings others and the friendships we make along the way. Ask every developer in our core group and they will all say its nice to get a donation but its not about the money and If my website went down the drain and my developers moved on so would life. Great example that you all have lived through already was EdenX. Roebeet stepped down from the development and support of EdenX and shortly after someone else took over and pursued his work and several other Roms popped up. 

From my recent interview (front of site) it sounds like Notion Ink is waiting on the release of Ice Cream Sandwich and their explanation seems very reasonable and makes sense to me. I predict that ICS will come out and NI will provide you a fresh OS thats publicly available. I foresee communities like mine taking the manufactures work and adding great new features like always and life moving on. 

I can't speak for Greg, but I am going to assume he is a human being and he was excited about his toy and after playing with it for awhile he moved on and plays with it on occasion and I see absolutely nothing wrong with that."

NI hasn't said anything.