RMS: Apple has tightest digital handcuffs in history | Hacker News Reader

RMS: Apple has tightest digital handcuffs in history

apple.slashdot.org

94 pointsbitcartel55 comments

Open source is great for infrastructure software. The number of high quality open source tools that exist now is actually quite amazing. All you need to start learning cutting-edge software development is an internet connection, an old computer, and a desire to learn. This has changed drastically in the past 20 years, and much of that can be attributed to Stallman's efforts.

But for consumer-facing software, I don't think open source is the right solution. The auto-updating marketplaces provide tremendous value to the average consumer. Installing software and keeping a machine up to date is a job. Most people don't have the time or inclination to do it. If I give someone an iPad, I can be 99% certain they won't make it unusable or full of viruses in a month. Have you seen the average person's Windows desktop?

You may disagree with what Apple deems an "approved" app, but we do have competing marketplaces. I think that is an important check and balance.

Apple also did a magnificent job at creating a DRM-free marketplace for music. It didn't happen all at once. Their negotiation with the music industry was gradual. That is something that an ideologue like Stallman is completely incapable of accomplishing, I'm sorry to say.

Sorry but this post is so full of rubbish it's almost trolling.

>for consumer-facing software, I don't think open source is the right solution..

Firefox, chrome, vlc, android.. think they work pretty well. Maybe not always, but yours was a pretty sweeping statement.

>..The auto-updating marketplaces provide tremendous value to the average consumer.

And have almost nothing to do with open vs walled-garden. What are these competing marketplaces on iOS? (besides, non-proprietary apps usually update themselves in the desktop world, which i can't see a big problem with).

Then you use windows as an example of 'open source' failure? Completely ignoring linux, which (as well as actually being open source and primarily running FLOSS apps) both won't get viruses in the hands of an average user (which i accept--android aside-- it is not normally in the hands of; but that's another discussion), and has also had package management for an eternity, as well as eg. ubuntu software centre for discovery (NB: not the only choice for software). That windows is not perfect is not an argument for the apple model (which IMO is largely better because it is much newer/no baggage; apple have made good software but that is no argument for its walled nature).

>Apple also did a magnificent job at creating a DRM-free marketplace for music. It didn't happen all at once

Apple created the locked nature with regard to the apps, it is not battling music labels to free them up. To insinuate that apple really wants an open system, but that it just needs time to mature, is.. contrary to reality (see also: the direction they are taking computer hardware).

NB: this, obviously, does not mean i share every opinion of RMS.

response: silent updating != walled-garden, FF is controlled by mozilla too, and basic VLC function is as easy to use as a DVD player. Yes moore's law has brought us great things, and apple makes nice stuff (relevance?).

Honestly, Chrome takes more of an app store model. It updates behind the scenes and always works. While it may be backed by open source work, it is released and controlled as product by Google.

Firefox is a disaster. I don't open it much, but I every time I do, it prompts for updates and things I don't care about.

VLC is wonderful program, and I use it almost every day. But it is way too complicated for most people. Something that plays videos should be as simple as a DVD player. VLC is a power tool.

I believe Apple wants to make computing that is easy, fun, and productive to use for non-programmers. They also want to make money. I don't think they want spy on and control their users for some arbitrary evil reason. At some point, there may be a need to take antitrust action against Apple, and those laws are there for a good reason.

I resisted buying an iPad for a long time. Then I saw Garage Band on the iPad. It is not a professional recording suite, that's true. But it's the modern day version of a home 16 track recorder + amp simulator + drum machine + MIDI sound back + effects unit. To get all this in a $500 package is literally quite amazing. 15 years ago, you'd have half a room full of equipment, a much clunkier interface, and endless wires. Even Garage Band on the Mac doesn't work as well.

I didn't insist that Apple wants an open system for apps. I said that it takes someone with negotiating skills to change an existing reality. You might even argue that free software would not be as successful today without someone like Linus who is more pragmatic.

I like freeform computing platforms for my programming tasks, like running web servers and the like. So long as Linux is around, we don't have to worry about that going away.

Not sure what is complicated about VLC? It's the simplest player I have ever used, you point it at a video file and it plays it. You get standard DVD player like controls for pause/play etc.

In contrast WMP refuses to play a bunch of filetypes altogether unless you mess with codecs and asks me a bunch of questions every time I start it up.

App stores are broken package managers. The auto-updating systems and absence of viruses that you attribute to Apple have long existed in the Free Softrware world.

There are no competing marketplaces for iOS apps.

And the DRM-encumbered marketplace of iTunes wasn't a good thing for consumers or for producers. So an ideologue like Jobs producing it wasn't a good thing.

Running "update all" on my iPhone has been way more stable than "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade" on my Linux servers over the years. It is a good model, but it is far from perfect. Could you just fire your sysadmin and put in a cron to auto update? I really don't think so.

Going through the phase of the DRM marketplace was necessary to get to the non-DRM marketplace that exists now. Politics, however unsightly, do exist. It is now more convenient to buy DRM-free music than to pirate it. That was honestly inconceivable in the Napster days.

Running "update all" on your iPhone is something almost completely different than running "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade" on a Linux machine.

On the Linux machine this might even include kernel upgrades. iPhones didn't do OTA upgrades for the system until quite recently and then is obviously a different process than just a simple app upgrade.

iPhone apps don't have dependencies because Apple doesn't allow them to. So every app update is just a small box update without affecting any other applications.

> iPhone apps don't have dependencies because Apple doesn't allow them to. So every app update is just a small box update without affecting any other applications.

Which is exactly the point.

Yeah and now compare how limited an iPhone is compared to a general computing device where programs are allowed to talk to each other and rely on each other.

You only get the functionality a single app gives you. For many things this is sufficient or at least you can live with. For games it almost doesn't matter.

This only works because 99% of the people don't use iPhones for creating stuff but for consuming content.

Maybe not having dependencies is a good idea. The iPhone runs Unix, too.

I don't have a good feel for the amount of malware on the various platforms. How do you think a well-curated app store differs from "a place" where you can get executables?

If I give someone an iPad, I can be 99% certain they won't make it unusable or full of viruses in a month. Have you seen the average person's Windows desktop?

I'm not sure that's a magic bullet. Amongst my family and friends at least, I have seen the following problems instead:

The iPad is now broken because they gave it to their kids to play "poke santa until he falls over" or whatever it is, they dropped it and it had all their stuff on it and they can't get it back because they have no idea what all their sign ins were and whether or not stuff was on facebook or the device or not. Can't get it off either because it's stuck together and the flash is soldered on the board.

The Windows PC is still full of crap, but at least we can get most of it back every time by yanking the drive, plopping it in a spare machine, virus scanning it, cleaning it up and sticking it back in their PC. Worst case, they lose a few infected jpgs or their WoW account details.

We get a lot more "fuck you iPad!" than we do with a PC to be honest.

I'd say the worst thing about the iOS environment is that everything isn't synced to the cloud consistently. It's approaching that. Restoring your stuff should be a matter of knowing a single sign in. We're getting there. But yes, you're right, there may be stuff on the flash drive that you can't necessarily get out.

Not everyone has a tech support person to restore their Windows machine from a crash. It sounds easy to you, but it is not. The average person should not need to run a redundant backup system in their house.

I love "open" computing and I would never want to be without it. But I've played tech support for my friends and family long enough to know it's never going to be for everyone.

However, I think everyone knows someone who can fix it. There is something to be said for ubiquity.

Although it is annoying being family tech support.

> Can't get it off either because it's stuck together and the flash is soldered on the board.

That's hardly the solution anyway.

> The auto-updating marketplaces provide tremendous value to the average consumer.

Good point. This is an "infrastructure" software, correct?

Conclusion seems to be that F/OSS forces should join together and create an Open App Marketplace.

You mean:

  echo "deb http://ftp.dk.debian.org/debian/ sid main contrib non-free" > /etc/sources.list

Linux has had software repositories for ages now. Unlike Apple's broken-by-design implementation, you can even have more than one on the same machine AND sideload apps, all out-of-the box. Sounds incredible, doesn't it?

There are three kinds: those that spy on the user, those that restrict the user, and back doors. Windows has all three. Microsoft can install software changes without asking permission

Don't most people consider automatic updates a feature? It's rare to hear someone say say "Boy, I really hate that chrome has automatic updates". And, if you don't like it, you can disable it. If he's referring to phones, my Linux (Android) phone automatically updates itself, and, if you recall the CarrierIQ debacle, the spyware features were disabled on iOS devices and enabled and some Android devices.

The term "back door" is misleading and deliberately inflammatory. The "back door" into windows that causes security updates to be installed by default saves people who don't obsessively download security updates from having actual back doors installed on their machines.

How does Windows spy on users? Is he talking about crash reporting or perhaps the malicious website tracking that some browsers now do, something that prevents actual spyware from being installed?

I use Ubuntu on two personal machines, and I really wish that it had a "back door" as nice as Windows Update. I've upgraded Ubuntu three times and it's broken software that I use daily every time. In one case, I had to recompile something from source, and in two other cases, I had to edit some obscure config file. I like free software, both philosophically and practically, but you're not going to win over users by telling them that features that make it possible for non-technical users to have a secure system are handcuffs.

I dislike this sort of demagoguery because it makes it harder to convince moderates. There's a guy like this at work; he makes it almost impossible to convince people of anything that's even similar to what he believes, because you have to first convince them that you're not a radical extremist before they'll listen at all.

Your criticism misses the technical points, either because stallman don’t always explains them, or because he assumes that people who needs the detailed facts will be able to find them out.

The back door feature of windows is not that users can receive automatic updates. Automatic updates are great. The problems is that users can not turn it off completely. Even if you disable automatic updates in windows, some updates will still be pushed regardless. Windows has demonstrated this in the past, and said (when asked about it) that they wont use that feature other than when "needed", but that fact that they can do this mean that they can turn it over to who ever, when ever, and for any reason that makes business sense to do so.

How does Windows spy on users. Over the time of windows history, users has found out that windows sends back a list over installed programs, encrypted to Microsoft, through I do not remember if they included statistics over usage. Now days, a default installed windows 8 machine will a) inform Microsoft each time you install a new program (to check for malware), and b) each time you visit a website with IE (to check for malware again), and c) your IP address each time you connect to the internet (to check if your internet connection works). You might be able to turn of some of those "features", but honestly, I don't know. In Windows xp, you could not disable the statistics gather of installed programs, as Microsoft said they needed that to improve the experience of windows. Now they turned it to a dual statistics and security feature, so maybe... maybe...

Could you link me to an article about how MS can push an update when updates are turned off?

Here are those that I could easiest find. If the slashdot articles are duplicates of any of the two above, then sorry. I just made a quick search for what I remember since 2007, which was a bit back ago :). If someone has a comment by microsoft in regard to any changed behavior in later versions of windows, that would be very interesting to read.

http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/operating_systems/win...

http://windowssecrets.com/top-story/microsoft-updates-window...

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/07/09/27/1345226/microsoft-st...

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/07/09/15/2040259/stealthy-win...

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/07/09/13/1259202/microsoft-ins...

Read the update posted on the microsoft-watch.com article.

I use Ubuntu on two personal machines, and I really wish that it had a "back door" as nice as Windows Update.

Well at least Ubuntu, when it offers updates, offers updates to all programs installed on the machine in one central place in a sensible way.

My experience with windows is that every application has its own upgrade checks, or even a background process specifically to check for upgrades for that application. This hogs down the machine, and ofcourse they all require rebooting every single time there's an update. (which would be ok-ish if it was just once, but as it's not coordinated they all want you to do it in turn)

I think people implicitly trust Microsoft and Apple to not install anything dodgy on their computers, and it's no different for Linux users.

As Mark Shuttlworth said, regarding integrated Amazon search, "Don’t trust us? Erm, we have root. You do trust us with your data already. You trust us not to screw up on your machine with every update." (http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182)

I don't see how can you compare the two.

Trusting Canonical with their bits just assumes they are not malicious and data will only leak by some freak bugs.

Trusting them with your every typed char in a search box is a totally different matter.

> it's no different for Linux users

you meant Ubuntu users

No, he meant Linux users, just gave Ubuntu as an example.

Not just because most distros are like Ubuntu, but also because the user base of the rest that are not like Ubuntu, Centos etc are statistical noise.

in the discussed context, Ubuntu is the only example.

There is a difference between having updates, and having updates you can't disable or turn down.

Ubuntu has no updates that are forced onto the users after the users disable automatic updates, but Windows does it. Apple? I do not know if apple has ever pushed an update that has ignored the user setting, so I will put that down as a maybe. Iphone, doubtful if apple can't push updates regardless of any user settings.

I can disable Windows updates, I can even say don't even bother checking for them.

There have been a few instances of bugs that ignored the settings but that's not by design, that's by accident.

A few Web forums have already started to discuss the updated files, which bear the version number 7.0.6000.381. The only explanation found at Microsoft’s site comes from a user identified as Dean-Dean on a Microsoft Communities forum. In reply to a question, he states:

“Windows Update Software 7.0.6000.381 is an update to Windows Update itself. It is an update for both Windows XP and Windows Vista. Unless the update is installed, Windows Update won’t work, at least in terms of searching for further updates. Normal use of Windows Update, in other words, is blocked until this update is installed.”

Windows Secrets contributing editor Susan Bradley contacted Microsoft Partner Support about the update and received this short reply:

“7.0.6000.381 is a consumer only release that addresses some specific issues found after .374 was released. It will not be available via WSUS [Windows Server Update Services]. A standalone installer and the redist will be available soon, I will keep an eye on it and notify you when it is available.”

In what way is this implied to be a bug?

Well Microsoft do install dodgy stuff. The poorly thought out MS11-100 patch broke everything for us.

Excellent point. How about all those businesses that have their services hosted in the cloud e.g. Amazon EC2.

What did an ubuntu upgrade break that required building something from source?

The driver for my wired Ethernet card is not included. I hoped it would be when I upgraded from 12.04 to 12.10 but there it was, finished upgrading and no wired connection. Since it is a work development box, where I am usually in the middle of a sprint, I will put off all future upgrades as long as possible.

Without a strong guarantee that my system will work exactly like it does before the upgrade I have no incentive to up grade ever again as long as I can get my stories done by the end of the sprint.

I don't think this is comparable. If you buy an iPad, you're getting hardware that is certified (and more) to run iOS. If you want it to compare this with Ubuntu, at least use a machine that is certified to run Ubuntu.

Alternatively, go ahead and complain that Ubuntu doesn't work well for you on non-certified hardware. But please don't conflate this with upgrade deficiencies.

This is a work computer, I don't have a choice.

All I know is that for the last six months, whenever I up grade my ubuntu box I spend anywhere from an hour to a day getting it back into the state it was so I can use and work with my code base - be it the wired driver, the over writing of java, or changes to the php.ini and on and on ..

I guess what you are saying is that I should reinstall windows and install the development tools I need on there? I should tell my (start up employer with a limited budget) that we need Ubuntu certified machines for all developers?

I'm not the only one win this problem - honestly you comment is the first time I have heard of an Ubuntu certified box. However I do know that other developers who have experienced similar issues take the same approach - I know of one person who is on 10.11 still. Not because he doesn't want an Ubuntu certified box or because he doesn't want to up grade but because he has work to do and upgrading gets in the way of that.

Why not go the other way, only install Ubuntu on certified hardware, keep me from using it on my hardware unless they can support it.

The unfortunate fact of the matter is that if you want to run a Linux computer with a seamless experience you need to do a bit of research on hardware in advance, at least this problem is nowhere near as bad as it used to be.

You could argue that you would have the same problem with OS X, it's just made easier for you because they designed the OS not to run at all on anything that wasn't 100% compatible. Running Ubuntu on random hardware is really more like running a hackintosh.

Now you could argue about who's "fault" this is. Canonical's for not making clearer which hardware is supported or pushing for better support, Yours for not doing the research or the hardware manufacturers for not providing better drivers out of the box but it is basically academic.

I actually remember an interview with Linus somewhere where somebody asked him "why is Linux not more popular on the desktop?" and his response was that the desktop is hardest because you have to try and support every printer that somebody might happen to plugin.

FWIW Lenovo and System76 computers seem to be the ones that people have best results with for running Ubuntu.

You make good points. My choice not to upgrade is more pragmatic than anything else ... Work to do and so many hours to do it in. And I agree, knowing about the certification makes it more like running hackintosh - one dev does that here and he has had several issues with Xcode that I do not on my mpb.

I also learned Linux on the command line mainly interacting with the typical LAMP app running on AWS. They were mainly Red arhat or CentoS and I never had to interact with a Linux desktop until about six months ago and I guess I just assumed that it was 2012 - surely the desktop/upgrade issues of the ninety's and aughts.

I don't think it is anyone's 'fault' it is just a difficult problem to solve. Knowing that there are Ubuntu certified desktops out there is useful info I can pass along to my boss before they buy an new device box.

I haven't even found that to be the case. I have several ARM boxes including Raspberry Pi, several desktops, a few Macbooks, etc, and have yet to have to build a driver from source. Worst thing I've had to do is go wired to install Broadcom stuff in Fedora because it didn't do it for me.

No offense but if you had built in and then did an in-place upgrade to a newer kernel, etc, I would not be surprised that things break.

These days, I'm as likely to do an in-place upgrade in Linux as I am in Windows. It's far too insanely easy to just have a separate /home partition and do a clean install. Apt makes it easy to restore packages.

You still have to rebuild the wifi module, but it shouldn't be any more work than the first time.

Stallman's right, but people don't seem to care, in much the same way that they stand by while their privacy rights are eroded in the name of safety. I am at a loss to explain why people don't care about this.

Part of the reason is that people don't invest themselves in their computers the same way people like Stallman do. As I've gotten older, my computer has just become something I use, not something I'm personally invested in. I don't really care if it's locked down in the same way I don't care that my car is locked down. If either need fixing I just take it to professionals whose job it is to fix it. I really care even less than my car because my car is a lot less easily replaceable.

I made this point in another thread but part of the reason it's so easy to just take your car to a professional is that it's not "locked down".

So anyone with requisite skills, knowledge and tools can fix your car, therefor auto mechanics have to compete on price and service. If your car was locked down in the same way you would be forced to go back to the manufacturer and accept whatever service they offered.

You could argue that this is a bigger problem with computers because they are more prone to monopolies due to the complicated interfaces between hardware and software systems, your car only has to interface with the road.

There are of course other issues too, when 90% of the people on the planet use computers that are almost entirely controlled by a small number of companies and these people use their computers for all of their communication and consuming all of their news this gives those companies a huge amount of power in terms of censorship , evesdropping etc.

So there are issues here that go beyond the computer in itself.

My car is definitely locked down in about the same way as my computer. The hardware is open (though much harder to get to these days than before), but the software is closed and you can't peak inside without specialized equipment.

The question is whether or not that is a good trend or not as the software become a more important part of the car.

Those who find Stallman's view of automatic updates against common sense should note that they are just the logical consequence of GNU's demand for "freedom to study and change the program in source code form". There's nothing more to it.

From that point of view automatic updates which could be reviewed at the source code level are different from binary updates, although both serve the same practical purpose for the "non technical end user".

Maybe we need better tools to study and change the program in binary form. I'm getting really sick of companies using binary blobs to obfuscate and mystify what is happening inside devices they produce. There is nothing magical to binary code, just like source code it's simply clear-cut instructions for the CPU what to do. Sure, you lose higher-level abstractions when compiling, which are sometimes hard to reconstruct, and sometimes impossible, such as comments and documentation... But there is a lot of information that can be derived from binary form. See for example the extensive literature on producing exploits from patches, even automatically, by using smart diffing that understands the assembly.

Currently this is pretty much limited due to nonavailability of advanced tools. To do anything beyond simple disassembly one needs expensive decompilation tools and disassemblers, and specialized proprietary tools that security companies are using.

But given that (in practice) it is neigh impossible to rely on only open source, I'd love it if binaries got some more scrutiny from the public instead of "just swallow them and pray everything is OK".

For someone looking for a direct link to the interview: http://www.newint.org/features/web-exclusive/2012/12/05/rich...

RMS says things, people angrily disagree with RMS, people passionately agree with RMS.

RMS is RMS. His idea of a computer is much different to what most people want. Out of curiosity does anyone know what he was talking about when he mentioned "two spy features" that Apple removed? I can't remember ever hearing about it.

I think one of them was the "Location Cache" that remembered locations and connected WIFI hotspots (IIRC to aid in fast geolocation), and there was another case of something like some carrier-mandated monitoring software. All a couple of years ago.

If that is the case then calling them features feels somewhat inaccurate. The location cache one was far closer to being a bug or an unintentionally poor implementation rather than something that had deliberately been inserted.

"six legged feature"?

Call it what you like but as all software has bugs it's not a particularly useful differentiator.

What I'm curious about is why closed software seems to get such a rough ride on the privacy front compared to services such as Facebook, Google Search and Gmail which are business models which don't leak data incidentally, but piss it up against a wall as a fundamental and entirely necessary part of how they work.

Facebook gets a tough time but Google it feels to me gets off very lightly.

Considering cryptography is advancing rapidly this is not surprising?

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