Summary:
If you need to "originally" write your code in Swahili, while listening to Milli Vanilli, while reclining in a patch of mud, and then you need fifty oompa loompas to translate the Swahili into C, that is none of Steve Jobs f#ck^ng business.
If you need to "originally" write your code in Swahili, while listening to Milli Vanilli, while reclining in a patch of mud, and then you need fifty oompa loompas to translate the Swahili into C, that is none of Steve Jobs f#ck^ng business.
Seriously: if Barnes and Noble decides it only wants to sell fiction by authors whose last names begin with "Q", wouldn't we just consider it a bone-headed move, and not the cause for moral outrage?
The iPhone is not the only smartphone on the market, and it's never pretended to be an open platform.
I really can't see why folks are getting their knickers in a twist.
Your use of demeaning language doesn't make your opponents wrong.
wouldn't we just consider it a bone-headed move, and not the cause for moral outrage?
It's both. Legality != morality. A business practice can be perfectly legal but immoral. Of course you can say anything Apple does is moral because it's within their rights, but there are also other ways of assessing the morality of actions, e.g. weighing their consequences.
A store-owner decides he wants to put an arbitrary restriction on the types of items he sells in his store. Let's say, perhaps, that a grocery store decides to stock only Organic produce.
What's the moral harm?
The owner of a store has a moral obligation to sell all possible goods in that store?
If I have a grocery store, I need to sell every possible foodstuff? I'm not allowed to decide that I want to sell only Organic produce?
But the analogy actually supports your position: it's clear that there are other app stores out there.
Anyone who has invested in a language layer technology can't do that. You can't take your Flash -> Objective-C compiler and sell it anywhere else. Apple just forced you to lose all of your investment for no good reason.
It's like offering communal grazing areas. A bunch of ranchers decide to move their cattle down to your area because it makes economic sense at the time. Once they arrive, you put up a fence and say fuck you. Now they spent their time and money moving down there, and have nothing to show for it. Sure you didn't have a contract but they have real material losses due to the changes in basically, the TOS on your grazing land. Catlle might die, ranchers might not be able to afford moving them back and go out of business. The same applies with Apple. I would hate to be a startup in this space right now.
If the ranchers decided to move their cattle to an area in the hopes that they might find communal grazing available, well, they took a risk, and lost. That's business.
Sellers of non-organic produce have plenty of other places to take their goods, and developers of applications for mobile devices/smartphones have plenty of other devices they can develop for.
Did you read the original comment he was responding to?
My last name does happen to start with a Q, and I happen to like Barnes and Noble.
So WTF would I let them stop me? Yes, I would be very much PO'd about it, and make a hissy-fit.
Let's say, instead: Barnes and Noble decides they only want to sell non-fiction books.
Sure, it's arbitrary, and it's probably bad business, but: it's their store.
Now, suppose you are a fiction writer.
Still going to throw that hissy fit?
No, a better analogy is if Barnes and Noble decides they only want to sell creationism books.
Science Based authors aren't owed a living by B&N, and would have to sell their books elsewhere.
That depends on if B&N is the only way for you to get books.
if you want to sell your app in my store, it's my business.
I agree with that, and if that's all it were I couldn't see people being outraged. But there's practically no other way to get apps on an iPhone.
Of course, the story is different in a monopoly situation. But that's clearly not the case here: there are a number of other mobile platforms available to developers.
Now they are making this unilateral change as a tactical move against a rival, seemingly unconcerned about the collateral damage. It's one thing to make a "bone-headed move." It's another to make such a move while hurting other 3rd parties in the process.
Even totalitarian states have an interest in keeping up the semblance of the rule of law. Doing so keeps commerce flowing. Going by this analogy, I guess you have a point: we shouldn't be surprised.
So, does that make Open Source licensing analogous to the rule of law and constitutional government?
Okay.
We are the ones being rejected and leaving the platform.
Look at what is being rejected: our personal ideas of the best ways for us to do work, our molding of the computer to the vision in our head.
If they told Van Gogh he had to work exclusively in the medium of gummy, he wouldn't take it quietly. After he cut off his ear and threw it at Steve Jobs, he'd pick up his paints and move to a new country where they let artists be artists and programmers be programmers.
Yes, we know this is boneheaded by Apple. And yes, in a just world, fiery judgment would rain down on this business strategy.
We are trying to persuade others of our point of view. Legality doesn't enter into it. We want understanding, we want minds, we want defectors.