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Comment by AmericanChopper | Hacker News Reader

> It is a simple matter of competition.

It’s most certainly not that simple. Anybody who wants to is free to compete with Apple, and many, many companies already do. But this is legislators dictating what 3rd party software Apple must support in its operating systems. Why stop there? Why not force Apple to support 3rd party providers as an alternative to iCloud? Why not mandate a 3rd party App Store? Why should Apple be allowed any control over which operating system or hardware features it exposes to 3rd parties at all? Why should Amazon be allowed to ship a kindle that only supports their book store?

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It is certainly that simple. You might not like it, because it limits the ability of Apple to exploit their ecosystem for rent-seeking. But it is just opening up an area for competition.

And indeed, why not doing this for other closed ecosystems as well, if this is beneficial for the public?

Because by doing so you’re making an enormous amount of software illegal, and compelling software developers by law to support anything any other developer may want to do. According to your logic, Apps should have full access to ring 0 too.

If public benefit is your only concern, then why don’t you consider the benefit of closed ecosystems, or at least of consumers having the option to choose one? I don’t see any public benefit in removing options for consumers. If open ecosystems offer such a superior benefit to consumers, then surely they would be able to out compete closed ones.

No, according to my logic, ecosystems should be forced to open up where it is beneficial to the public. This pretty obviously excludes access to ring 0.

Also, it needs to be balanced with the interests of the companies owning the ecosystem.

You can only ever judge where that is true according to whatever opinions you personally have.

I agree that you cannot easily assess if such a legislation is beneficial for the public or not. That is the case for many government decisions. It still is not a matter of personal opinions/taste, it is a matter of arguments.

So it would be your turn now to argue why this specific law is harmful for the public. (We agree that it is harmful for Apple.)

> This pretty obviously excludes access to ring 0.

How is it obvious? One could easily argue that because some hardware manufacturers make shitty drivers, opening up access will allow 3rd party developers to create better drivers, or something like that.

I’m not sure how this is beneficial to the public. Honestly, I’d argue that ring 0 access is probably more beneficial than this; see the jailbreaking exemptions we already have in place.

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