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Comment by toyg | Hacker News Reader

This will be round 2 in the fight for formalizing the role of OS developers versus App developers. Round 1 was the MS antitrust case, the outcome of which was clearly too weak to survive in the long run.

The definition of general-purpose Operating Systems should be formalized, and there should be a clear separation of roles: if you make an OS you cannot make apps and services, end of story. Then force Apple, Google, and Microsoft, to spin off their OS divisions or their apps&services divisions. That would immediately create a level playing-field for everyone.

Is this difficult? Yes. Is it necessary? Also yes.

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>there should be a clear separation of roles: if you make an OS you cannot make apps and services, end of story.

This. How come the authorities cracked down hard on Microsoft in the 90's and early 2000's for exactly this but aren't doing the same with Apple and Google now?

I remember the days when, at least in the EU, due to antitrust laws, Windows XP had to come without Windows Media Player and without Internet Explorer preinstalled[1], which made for a rough out of the box experience for newbie users if they just wanted to quickly browse the web or play their "totally legit" mp3s after installing it, but it served to give competing apps and browsers a fighting chance and not allow Microsoft to entrench its monopoly further.

By the same logic, why can't we force Google/Apple to not prioritize their own apps and services on their platforms against their competitors?

[1]https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=144651...

Microsoft low balled Netscape when they tried to buy them and then set out to crush them anyway with IE, it was largely seen as bullying behaviour. Google/Apple don't really do this, they buy what they see as promising companies with good ideas and pay plenty for them, so does Facebook with social.

So the difference is, Google/Apple never really look like bullies the way MS did, instead they look like companies innovating.

For the most part in mobile google just brought its already successful products to android, it hasn't from what I call explicitly tried to kill an already successful product in another niche? Well maybe with its various "social" attempts but they failed so bad it never became an issue.

Hasn't the EU already imposed at least as many restrictions on Android than they ever did on Windows? The search engine choice screen, cancellation of anti-forking agreements, and unbundling search/browser from the rest of the apps and services.

But I do find it crazy how utterly disinterested they were with Apple for a decade, and how limited the current investigation into just in app purchases is.

> but aren't doing the same with Apple and Google now?

What is Google doing that is an issue here? One can install competing app stores on Android devices.

Does that mean you can’t supply a notepad?

How about Ubuntu? Would they be allowed to ship a terminal?

What about smalltalk running on bare metal? Do environments that blur the line between apps and the OS become illegal to supply?

Government regulated software will completely destroy all software freedom, forever.

You are being overly dramatic. Take the features that Windows 95 shipped with and codify them into broad legalese guidelines. That's all it takes.

> Take the features that Windows 95 shipped with and codify them into broad legalese guidelines.

Well played! Very dröle.

This is too simplistic. Linux distributions like Ubuntu provide both the OS and the apps and services. One could argue that the OS is the apps and services. Yet we see neither a monopoly there, nor complaints.

Which leads me to believe that what you're proposing is not addressing the root cause.

There are complaints in the Linux world too, about package management (e.g. the push to snaps), they’re just less relevant since the platform is fully open anyway and there is no economic impact.

It's impossible to fairly compete against a company that has total knowledge and access to the OS, access to stats on what your programs do and how they work, and total knowledge and control of future development.

How much do you consider an OS? Because right now Apple could say “fine”, create “The Darwin and XNU Foundation”, and just keep their closed source window manager / core apps (SpringBoard/Finder calendar, mail, App Store). As long as they donated enough to the foundation to keep open builds coming for other platforms (even if you just get a shell with really old coreutils, although I bet it’d be better than that), the antitrust suit you’re suggesting would probably be covered.

Nope, the definition of OS would have to cover at least the window manager and the equivalent of win32/cocoa libs, so that developers can build first-class “windowed applications”. I know it wouldn’t be a trivial effort to define it in legal terms, but even in imprecise terms it would lay the foundation for a body of law that could keep OS developers honest.

Ok, so now the government regulates user interfaces forever.

No thanks.

Ah great, so now smartphones never happen at all because regulations say general purpose computers must allow windowed applications? You seem to have a remarkable faith in government regulations! All the attempts to regulate tech I've directly had experience with were disaster zones of unintended consequences.

There isn't an issue with making apps and an os - there is an issue with being the only one allowed to do special things, which is what got MS in trouble back in the the day.

The problem with that argument is that unless the OS is completely open source, the developer of the OS can always do special things.

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