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Comment by jshier | Hacker News Reader

Not optimistic here. While I'm glad the SPI guys are getting paid (that is, a full time job), Apple is pretty bad at open source and developer services both, and they explicitly call out developer identity as a future direction, which doesn't fill me with hope.

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I tried to get a personal developer account (I'm already a developer through an organisation). The app required a Driver's license as the only accepted ID. I don't drive because I'm blind. They did a screen share and talked me through applying on the web site. It failed. They never gave a reason and ignored me when I asked for one. They just said

"Hello Robert, Thank you for your patience while I awaited a response from our operations team.

Upon review, we have found that we can’t verify your identity with the Apple Developer app or provide further assistance with the Apple Account for Apple developer programs.

You can still take advantage of great content using your Apple Account in Xcode to develop and test apps on your own device. Learn more about Xcode development.

I do apologise that I was not of more help to you in this situation but wish you the best of luck for the future. "

They will destroy the developer experience when they add identity and signing.

I'm not sure about the laws where you're at, but to me, this sounds like something they should have to accommodate you on.

Don’t jurisdictions generally offer ID cards for non-drivers that are functionally equivalent for ID purposes, you just can’t drive?

Yes, of course, it seems that type of ID was specifically rejected in the story above. Only drivers allowed to sign up. Non-drivers rejected because they don’t drive.

Yes, I have a passport which is accepted by every other company I have had to verify id with. Apple doesn't offer it as an option for UK accounts for some reason.

I agree, but I just created anew Apple id, and got a developer subscription straight away on the web without it asking for id. I suppose they will probably require id if I submit to the app store, but the fact that I already paid should carry more weight I hope.

My driver's license is in a form factor Apple cannot scan. A few months ago, I tried to get it scanned four times (with the UI telling me various versions of "your ID is too blurry" / "there was a technical issue") before Apple just blocked me from applying for the developer program.

Their support gave me the exact same template: "After reviewing your account details, it looks like we can’t verify your identity with the Apple Developer app or provide further assistance with the Apple Account for Apple developer programs."

I was only unblocked recently (surprisingly -- I thought I was banned forever), and so I decided to try applying with passport instead. That got further, as instead of saying my ID image was blurry, it said "ID Verification Rejected".

I am in contact with developer support right now and they told me that one of my devices or phone numbers was registered with another developer account, but they haven't told me which one (only to "remove phone numbers and devices that you don’t own" -- which isn't applicable as I own all of them).

They're taking 4+ days to reply each time though, which is super frustrating.

I see the opposite, they have a lot of oss projects nowadays and most of their new, interesting stuff is getting open sourced too, a la Microsoft

Simply being open doesn't make them good open source projects. Luckily the SPI shouldn't need to conform to Apple's release schedule, and should operate mostly independently, so the worst aspects of Apple's open source projects will be less of an issue.

No true Scotsman…

Even simpler, this is a "no Scotsman" scenario. Apple has unprecedented contempt for Open designs and software standards, even compared to the pitiful example that Microsoft and Google set.

Unlike them, Apple takes a stance of contravening the public good to emphasize lock-in. They refused USB-C for as long as possible to sell licensed serial connectors that their Macs didn't even use. They fought tooth-and-nail to politicize the free distribution of software when the EU wanted to enable sideloading. They abandoned open initiatives like Khronos, for no reason other than to screw over cross-platform developers. They give Safari special OS entitlements that they refuse to extend to competing mobile browsers, and then justify it as if they can't write a safe OS.

There is no company on planet Earth that goes this far to undermine FOSS. Apple is the fakest Scot.

Dude. Apple basically created USB-C.

Yes, Apple is quite selfish when it comes to open source. They avoid GPL license code because they only want to selectively share their code, which is one of the reason they now avoid GCC and stopped utilising GNU Coreutils in their OSes. It supports developments of some popular opensource apps (like Blender) because it is very popular and not having it on its platform hurts it. And now, by charging developers an annual fee for distribution through App Stores, they also prevent many non-commercial open source applications from being available on the App Store. As Apple also further makes money from any commercial apps through the app store (by extorting a commission from them), it doesn't really want such popular free opensource apps to compete with the commercial apps - every time someone uses one of these free apps, Apple also loses money. Thus, by gatekeeping distribution Apple now effectively cripples the growth of open source applications on its platform. (The only reason a few of it - like VLC, for example - still survives on the App Store is because some kind people donate the money to pay Apple's fees - a waste of money and a shameful act for a trillion dollar company).

Not only is Apple bad at open source, they ban participating on open source projects outside of work.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200421143520/https://twitter.c...

This acquisition sounds like a sign that Apple wants to get better on that front.

That's a pretty low bar, and doesn't necessarily mean "good".

That’s right. Whenever a company does something that seems good let’s just start being mean.

If they’ve ever done something we don’t like we’re not allowed to celebrate anything.

Might send the wrong message.

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