Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

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If you think that license agreements have terms only to be enforced in reasonable cases then probably you also believe that laws that do not make sense will not be used in cases where they really shouldn't.

By introducing a bunch of legalese in its license agreement that states you are not allowed to do a bunch of stuff, then to willfully transgress those rules predicated on

   "apple doesn't care and doesn't have the resources to go after you"

is setting yourself up for a big fall. If you happen to be successful and you happen to be in the way of apple in some way or other you've just handed them your termination clause on a platter.

It's a bit like saying everybody should drive too fast because the government doesn't have the resources and they don't care about it too much anyway. Until some law enforcement officer decides he needs a 'probable cause' to go after you. Of course, since the government doesn't have the resources to go after every driver that would never happen, would it ?

If Apple doesn't care about 'high level languages' they should re-write their terms, and say what it is that they're really after, in stead of 'smart founders' and 'hackers' reading the mental message between the lines that this isn't really about them and will never be enforced.

I don't think Apple should have a say about what stuff runs on computers they sell anyway, if they want to get in to the rental business that's fine with me but then they should say so outright. It looks like these devices are being sold, not rented to me, so Apples influence over them should end as soon as they leave the store.

If you were "in the way of apple in some way or other," they would just drop your app from the store, with no explanation given (or required.) They don't need to add a clause in their contract to prevent you from publishing your app in their store; they just don't publish your app. The only reason 3.3.1 exists is so they can drop developers from the store for something Adobe did, instead of something they did. In other words, it's actually a "this isn't your fault" clause—if they didn't have it, they'd just be banning individual developers who happened to try submitting Flash-compiled apps, and that would suck for those developers much more than just being told "make an actual, iPhone-native app from scratch and we'll talk."

But more importantly, a rule that is selectively enforced only upon your competitors gives you an advantage. Those who live off the Apple sharecropping gold-rush know they could be kicked out at any time, for any reason; in such an atmosphere, the best thing that can happen is all your competitors being kicked out while you're ignored. The fact that there's a rule against what you're doing doesn't change the fact that you could be kicked out at any time—it just heightens the risk/reward ratio for both you and the other people doing it.

I think Section 3.3.1 is good for hackers in a very different way than explained in the blog post. Good hackers will (by and large) follow the law for their commercial endeavours rather than try to work around Apple's insane (and ever shifting) policies. I for one wouldn't set out to build a business based on explicitly breaking the law and with the possibility of a lawsuit looming.

That said, the IPad, IPhone and AppStore have raised the bar for UI design, user installation, sales (and payment) processing and so on where there is now a clearly defined "what hackers want" gap in the ecosystem. The Apple AppStore is an existence proof of what is possible and this is orthogonal to languages used and so on (as demonstarted by games using Unity3D).

Hackers want to build their own languages that compile down to the "native" language and APIs but they also want the AppStore style payment processing and so on with better facilities for updating our apps, a faster and more comprehensive review cycle (assuming that a review is a good thing) and so on.

If someone (Google? Microsoft? someone totally new? ) were to fill this gap (and someone eventually will), it will be "good for hackers". Section 3.3.1 is good insofar as it will spur development of alternative ecosystems and force disgruntled hackers off the Apple path. No one who has a choice and wants to stay within the bounds of the law will accept such inane terms and conditions. Microsoft had far less onerous policies and far less competition than Apple in the mobile space, and yet, over many years there was a drain of top class developers from MS's platforms to Linux/BSD and later to Apple. Once upon a time MS was the only game in town for commercial projects. The advent of teh Web and Open Source changed that game. The same scenario, with different players and technology, will play out with Apple, but it won't be instant and will take a while.

You comments about the importance as an existence proof of the creation of this ecosystem are I think the most interesting and useful thing I've read in all these Section 3.3.1 discussions. Thanks!

The part you have in quotes is really wrong because he is not saying something like that. Why are you changing what he said? This is really irritating. People use quotes when they want to refer to a statement as it was made.

which is "technical resources to tell whether an executable has been compiled from human-written C code or compile-target C code"

> People use quotes when they want to refer to a statement as it was made.

Apologies, you're right. That was not the intention of the quoted bit, it was meant as a statement of what this piece makes me feel like. If I 'quote' a statement online I use the > mark (like above), I don't know of a typographical convention that would convey what I tried to do here other than using quotes.

Suggestions ?

The thing is that most of the times, people read comments and then the article. So, I think it would be best if you are going to comment on a certain aspect to just include the original peace and then comment on it.

Other than that I am not aware of a more conventional way.

Single 'scare quotes' in English can provide the needed signal to the reader that you are using a paraphrase or exaggerated characterization of a position.

Thanks! I never realized there was such a big difference in which style quotes you use.

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