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Not sure I follow you. Do you mean, they won't do it because it makes a lot of money or do you mean they straight up don't have the right because of the economic platform they've created benefits a lot of people.

Just to be clear, I'm just trying to understand if folks think the app store is a public commons or is it private property?

Lots of the comments on this issue imply that the store is a public commons. And I'm wondering if that's a common view.

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Because it makes a lot of money, Apple doesn't have the right to engage in such a self-sabotaging move because they are bound to their investors, who would be mad at them willingly destroying such a revenue stream. So debates about commons aside, the question is somewhat ludicrous because it's about as fanciful and applicable as "What if Microsoft released the Windows source code?"

A bit off-topic, but frankly, I think trying to use the Windows source code would be a liability for everyone but something like WINE. Just building it would be a trick, last I heard a full build of Windows took an entire day. I'm guessing it wasn't your beefy Dell machine building it, either. I'll bet there are so many pieces and custom tools and forgotten necessary settings on build machines that building it would be a nightmare. And then there is the test suite. I wouldn't trust a custom build of Windows, who knows all the subtle settings here and there that are necessary to get the same result. I think Microsoft could put the Windows source on GitHub tomorrow and the only thing that would happen is that they'd get a lot of bug bounties and an increase in the number of people they could hire who could just step in and start working without having the six-month ramp up in understanding the relevant code base.

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