> copying an app then banning that developer's app off the Appstore is better than copying an app's features while allowing it to be sold?I said no such thing. I said, by implication, that losing a year's revenue, but still having a functioning company, is better than being forced into bankruptcy.
Also, that in no way means that causing a third party app developer to lose a year's revenue is not a bad thing to do. Of course it is.
However, in both cases, the root cause is that the owner of the platform wants to run their platform in a way that third party devs don't like. And ultimately, unless the users of the platform care enough to force the platform owner to change, third party devs are simply going to be out of luck. It sucks, but that's the fact. Third party Windows apps today are for things that MS doesn't care enough about to implement themselves, because Windows users don't care that third party devs get a raw deal. Third party iOS apps are going to end up the same way, unless iOS users start to care about the sucky position third party devs are in. Which, as far as I can tell, they don't.