We've see a lot of drastic changes coming from Palm lately, mostly in the form of important employees leaving for a different company.  Today, however, we've got a change that could actually increase the number of applications developed for webOS.  Palm has announced that they are dropping the $50 app submission fee that they used to charge to list apps in their official catalog.  Going one step further, they're even refunding all of the developers who have paid the fee in the past.  Devs have been getting the news via an email from Palm, and you can see an excerpt below:

And we have one more program change that will benefit all developers. When we launched the developer program, we introduced a $50 per app fee to submit apps into our catalog. Effective immediately, we're waiving this fee and refunding to all developers any $50 fees collected in the past. If you're one such developer, you will see a credit in your PayPal account in the near future.

This is a great move for Palm, and it should definitely spur some interest from developers.  With all of the recent departures from the company, I'm glad to finally see some good news from the Palm camp.  Some may think that this makes them sound desperate, but they needed to get their name out there and have it presented in a good light.  With the news that they are bringing new webOS hardware as well as an OS update, things look like they're picking up for Palm.

Via PreCentral