Closed for Business
mattgemmell.com
mattgemmell.com
OK, I admit, I couldn't read past this sentence. This is so much complete and total bullshit that I closed the tab in disgust.
The ability to sideload apps on a non-rooted, non-jailbroken device is exactly what any and every device I own absolutely must support and this is non-negotiable. If I own a piece of computing hardware, I will have the freedom to install and run any software I want, regardless of where or how I obtained. Oh, and I don't use pirated software.
Given that people are already talking about a "war on general purpose computing"[1], it's downright shameful for this guy to run around promoting the idea that open devices are designed to enable piracy.
"Guy doesn't agree with me on something fundamental. Shame on him."
I don't believe "openness" connotes "intent to enable piracy", but "piracy is far more rampant in the open Android ecosystem than the closed iOS ecosystem" isn't an unreasonable observation to make, and, having made it, "openness promotes piracy" isn't a totally unreasonable conclusion to draw from it.
Stop telling people to be embarrassed about their ideas. It's a very poor rhetorical strategy. The only benefit it accrues to you is that it riles your supporters up into similarly gnarly expressions of contempt. It certainly doesn't persuade anyone of anything.
The world has a lot of racists... but I don't think it would be reasonable to conclude the world promote racism.
Reasonable people have observed that Google profits off piracy in other contexts.
Your last sentence is a non sequitur.
So... reasonable people observed that Google profits off piracy... and that leads to the conclusion that "open devices are designed to enable piracy"?
>Your last sentence is a non sequitur.
Side note: Interesting that non sequitur has two different uses that make you either wrong or right depending on which you were using.
If you are thinking of it as a literary device because of its apparent lack of meaning relative to what preceded it, then I would say you are wrong. It is an example of how the formula THIS has a lot of THAT, therefore THIS promotes THAT is not an accurate formula. I believe it to be a relevant example, therefore not a non sequitur (literary device)
If you are thinking of it in terms of logic because its conclusion does not follow from its premises, then I would say you are right... because that was the whole point of giving those examples. The premise of THIS has a lot of THAT is not sufficient to make the conclusion that THIS promotes THAT. It almost never is. So... yes, a non sequitur (logic).
And that isn't what I quoted and replied to. If that was all TFA had said, I probably could have nodded my head and said "Yeah, whatever" and kept going. But TFA made a much stronger statement than that, which you seem to conveniently be ignoring here, since you apparently want to win an argument that no one else seems to be having.
Stop telling people to be embarrassed about their ideas. It's a very poor rhetorical strategy. The only benefit it accrues to you is that it riles your supporters up into similarly gnarly expressions of contempt. It certainly doesn't persuade anyone of anything.
Who said they were trying to persuade anybody?
In your subjective view, which has exactly zero more, or less, validity here than mine. This feels like you're wasting time, arguing for the sake of being pedantic, or just because you like arguing.
Is there some fundamental point you're trying to make here? Because if there is, it doesn't look like anyone else is getting it.
How about, "People who want to violate my property rights by crippling the digital devices I own (and/or refusing to let me own such open devices in the first place) because they'd make a little more money that way are morally wrong."
I expect to be able to load software of my choosing on hardware that I own. I expect to be able to delete software that I disapprove of or is causing me harm. I expect to be able to browse files and delete data that I don't want. I expect to be able to monitor my hardware to ensure that it hasn't been hijacked. I expect to be able to disable or block any tracking software, and at the very least, to close any back doors I find. I expect all this because I own a fairly powerful general purpose computing device, the greatest invention of mankind.
Maybe Joe User doesn't expect to do these things himself, but he should expect a choice in services and providers, not a blanket "Sorry Joe, I'm afraid I can't let you do that" from a single malevolent dictator like Apple.
So yes, a company that promises such things by selling me something (rather than just conditionally renting out the hardware), and then continues to exert their control over my property at my expense and for their profit, is morally wrong.
Yeah, except the part where Google announced encrypted applications from the Android Market at Google I/O. The presenter got light applause and seemed confused, asking for more applause. It seems that no one figured out the implications of that. Apps will be encrypted with a device-specific key from the store. People have been complaining about this since forever, Google is taking a major step to address the piracy problem, and no one has noticed.
What wasn't clear to me was whether or not it was going to be enforced on older versions of Android. I imagine it will be though.
Dead trigger makes its money from in-app purchases. In practice it is no more free now than it was before.
Piracy is rampant on iOS too. It's slightly more harder on an iOS device, but it's not exactly difficult.
Football Manager 2012 handheld will be one I'll watch with interest. The publishers Sports Interactive have said that it has it's targets for Android and if it doesn't hit them there won't be another version. That's a massive franchise (in the UK at least) so I'm keen to see whether it can justify it's existence (selling price $5).
I remember an anecdote about a 90% piracy rate. It turns out that the game was prominently listed on a popular pirate board, but was buried deeply on the app store.
Combine that with a tendency for pirates to install huge numbers of games that they'll never likely play, and a 90% piracy rate isn't surprising.
Personal anecdote: Massive sales cause me to buy games that I'll likely never play. I just dropped over $50 on Steam because of their massive summer sale. $20 went to the latest Humble Bundle. A few months ago I bought a bunch of games for 10 freaking cents each on the Google store. I've purchased two sequels and one in-app since for those games, but my total outlay is still well under $10.
So I believe that the biggest problems on both Android and iOS are pricing and discovery. Piracy is a problem, but not as much as pricing and discovery, IMO.
I completely agree with you.
If so, it seems to be doing pretty well so far for a $10 app.
1. Show him the money: I'm not sure he's comparing apples with oranges here. He makes a good living from iOS, but (crucially) by consulting for others who themselves may not have a sustainable business model. There is an increasing amount of evidence suggesting the indie dev model isn't sustainable on iOS, either, from AppCubby and Sparrow to the iconFactory and more.
2. Open vs Closed: I don't think one data point (the app store) is enough to damn open platforms. The Mac is open by his definition, and so is Windows. Are those both "bad for business"? Hardly.
3. Open vs Open: He then conflates "open" (as in I can install anything I want on it without going via a store) with "Open" as in open source, when the two are very different. Piracy is possible on a on a closed-source open-install platform, the open/closed nature of the source is absolutely irrelevant here.
He tries to join the two with a hand-wavy "piracy is easy on Android because it has an open mentality", when the source license has zip to do with this. It makes all the later jabs about Stallman more than a little strawmanish.
4. Choice vs Free: This is more a pedantic point, but you can't go from "too much choice is bad" (which I'd agree with in certain contexts) to "and so freedom is bad". He doesn't back that up, by the way, just asserts "but freedom is bad". No, it is not bad. Sometimes freedoms collide, and sometimes they can be traded. But "overwhelming choice is bad" and "overwhelming freedom is bad" are not synonymous statements.
5. Lock it down (unless it's a movie or album that I want): His conclusion in this piece is basically "Close it down and keep prices high to beat the pirates". Which is an interesting contrast with http://mattgemmell.com/2012/02/17/the-piracy-threshold/ where he says "Open it all up and keep the prices very low or I will pirate".
There's more to be had in this post, but I think I've reached enough errors to abort. At least this one didn't end with "disagree? amuse me by telling me".
Uh... Sideloading is not about piracy. One of the nice things about Android is that you are not locked into getting your apps from a store. I've sideloaded apps my company is creating. I've sideloaded apps that friends have made. I've sideloaded advance betas from companies I've had a relationship with. Sideloading is just installing a file.
I hate this assumption, it's grounded in nothing but unwarranted optimism about humanity.
Maybe people pirate because they're cheap, selfish, and don't like spending money on things they can get for free. As the article established, people were mass-pirating apps that were easier to install legitimately and cost less than a buck anyway. If you pirate that, odds that you just need a better business model to entice you to not pirate are slim to none.
That may not apply to everyone, but it does apply to a lot of people.
There is absolutely zero reason to believe that there is a perfect equilibrium where business maximizes its goals and users have no incentive to pirate. The two are constantly at conflict (money is pretty much a zero-sum game, and ultimately it all does come down to money in some way or another), and it's hard to compete with free. No matter what you offer, if it has a cost then it's hard to compete with that same offering minus the cost.
The overall point - that it's a failure of business models - is one of the two truths that seem to me to be becoming evident in the whole "piracy" debate.
The second (which applies to "consumers") is if there's no valid business model it's highly likely that you're going to see an impact on content creation and availability for platforms where piracy is widespread.
But I find exciting that over the next 10 or 20 years markets will change fairly radically as a result of these things. Personally, I'm no fan of piracy, I think people should be paid for their work. However, I also think that the genie is out of the bottle now and it's going to be a fact of the world going forward and it's for all of us to learn to live with.
They're killing their competition _and_ benefitting from it? Those poor fools!
That said, I disagree with the careless linking of FOSS principles and bad market practices. Linux, BSD, Apache: these technologies and others have had enormous positive impact that has enriched the industry as a whole more than paid versions could ever have benefited individual developers. However, the existence and promotion of FOSS in no way guarantees the cancer of one-dollar apps. Only developers' persistent undervaluation of their own work can do that. Specifically, their rush to capture the long tail of cheapskates at the cost of forgoing the bulk of the consumer surplus makes the entire market less desirable. Everybody loses when we must wade through a swamp of low-cost crap rather than the garden of costlier but higher-quality services we'd wish for.
There are definitely barriers to making a living selling apps, but blaming them on your fellow victims is utterly foolish.
Econ 101 says that competition will push prices down to the level where everyone makes exactly enough to keep producing their product. Econ 101 assumes zero differentiation between products, zero brand value, etc., in these cases of perfect competition.
If you are a developer who's making something innovative and useful, whether on iOS or no, it is differentiated from the rest of the market. You are free to compete on price by selling for $1, but you may also compete on quality, solve a unique problem for your market, and sell for $5 or $10. I believe that many developers are doing exactly the latter, but still selling for $1 simply because they think it's "what is done." If they instead sold for $5 or $10, people would still buy and the developer would make more money. If enough people did this, it would remove the noxious attitude that "nothing is worth more than a couple bucks on the App Store." Consumers would get better apps, iOS developers would make a better living, and the ecosystem would improve as a whole.
We expect piracy of our apps and priced them accordingly. Our users pay the $2 simply for the ease of automatic updates & notifications. If you pirate the app you'll always be a version (or 15) behind and have to keep up on your own. If it's worth it, you clearly need the $2 more than us. Kewl.
For something you want to seriously scale, you have to do it for free anyway. It's still land rush for new markets. Nothing's changed there.
As an aside.. I would never pirate a $1 app, that is just ridiculous. I've spent way more than the average person in the app stores.
A lot of people have energy to give to open source because they get something out of it that's not money. Most people who play sports are not paid, or do art, dance, blog or lots of things really.
If you don't want to work for free, don't, I'm sure someone else who's bored or wants to sharpen their skills will step and fill the void you left.
We don't NEED another iOS... iOS and WP7 is enough.
Having your words twisted is definitely insulting.
And, whether you agree with Mr. Gemmell or the other two gentlemen, this was a misunderstanding at worst and the assertion that the "piece is really personally insulting" is laughable. (It's probable that he responded out of frustration, which is only human, but perhaps he could have used the opportunity to clarify himself.)
That's must be why Oracle and IBM have never made money supporting their products on Linux - it's that corrosive mentality of having the core of the underlying kernel be open source.
"The only principle that enters into it is that of survival: keeping food on the table, and making sure the lights stay on. Open doesn’t sit well with those goals."
But you could read it to say, the Google app store is more open than Apple's restricted/approved walled garden and this allows more pirate apps. The article isn't very clearly written.
Of course the open access also avoids the many stories we get on here about - my original app was arbitrarily removed by someone at Apple because they thought it was the copy of another app - and I can't talk to anyone about it.