From my perspective, users and developers have MORE freedom now with the advent of the iPhone than they had before it was introduced.
Before it was introduced, you had NO FREEDOM at all to develop, sell or use iPhone apps. Now, you have freedom to develop them under certain conditions that are not as free as possible in an EFF-idealized world, but to say that the introduction of the iPhone strictly takes away freedom I think is wrong.
The EFF is about electronic freedom
When people in the US talk about freedom, they seem to only focus on the freedom of them to do what they want and disregard the possibility that their actions might have side effects.
But re: limiting freedom: Do you think that giving everyone the freedom to kill people would be a net improvement of the freedoms of people when you take into account that people who are killed don't have any freedom at all.
It's so easy to say that freedom means that "I should be able to do what I want without regard for others". But thinking of freedom only in the active sense is an extremely naive idea of freedom. What about my freedom to remain free of the consequences of your actions?
Concrete example 1: SUVs disproportionately transfer risk to the occupants of smaller vehicles in the event of a collision. Is someone's freedom to choose to drive an SUV more important than my freedom to drive a Miata without undue risk of being killed by your SUV? Why do you think your lifestyle choice should be more important than mine?
Concrete example 2: In the US, some people think it's an essential freedom to be allowed to own firearms. This has lead to a proliferation of firearms which means that the US has the highest rate of gunshot deaths of any modern country. Why should people's freedom to own a firearm be more important than my freedom to go about my business without worrying about getting shot?
My point is: there's always a tradeoff. Not acknowledging that tradeoff is either disingenuous or naive.
It's so easy to say that freedom means that "I should be
able to do what I want without regard for others".
When you use my code I want you to be restricted. I want you to make all your changes publicly available to everyone, and if you make a hardware device that runs my code, I want you to make it possible for users to modify my code and be able to run it on that device.
If you don't want to agree to my conditions, don't run my code.
But this isn't about taking away freedom; I want there to be more freedom. Because of the conditions I impose, anyone can build off your work in addition to my work. More code, more freedom.
This phrasing was careless: it sounds like you want to prevent private modifications (freedom 1).
You're not the only one to make this mistake. Because of it, many people think the GPL forbids private modifications. Many don't like it because of this misconception, so we should mind our words.
Of course, I agree with the gist of your post.
I'd say only this: if the GPL gets in your way, that's
because you want to distribute proprietary software, right?
What does this mean?
What sort of agreement is that? From what I hear, none of this is unusual in mobile or consoles.
Since the dawn of smartphones (or J2ME feature phones before that), the Symbian and Windows Mobile development was free for all game. No NDAs, no contract, just download the SDK, develop and distribute whatever you want.
That changed with RIM and Apple. After these, Symbian also began to act stupidly with their Symbian Signed initiative.
While there's much to criticise about Apple's approach with the App Store, I don't think it was unreasonable to require app signing and a developer fee in return for getting your apps hosted and easily available on the App Store. I would prefer it if there was also an alternative distribution mechanism available, but that aside I don't have any problem with the App Store as a concept.
The difference was, that Symbian Signed aimed for accountability - they wanted to trace back, who made which binary. They didn't really cared what the binary did, just in case of malware, there was accountability. You got your certificate upfront and in 99% cases, they didn't care what you are going to write and how you intend to distribute it. The rest 1% (still hugely inflated number) was, when you requested root-like capabilities (i.e. you would have a way to mess with hardware or DRM directly), then they wanted to hear your business case.
BREW platform was, to put it bluntly, non-player on non-market (US was at the time considered backward contry mobile-wise and the rest of the world ignored BREW). RIM was never popular among third-party developers, and among users everyone was buying BB for the messaging, nobody cared for third-party apps.
I do have problem with Apple's approach with the App Store. I think it is unreasonable to be bridge-watching troll between me and my device. IF there was a way to sideload unsigned or self-signed binaries, that would be not a problem, but App Store is the only way to put app on the device, and this way is gated. If the App Store was optional (althrough still preferred or popular) way, I would not have problem with paying for hosting and cataloging apps.
I'm tired of hearing about how Apple is "abusing" developers, unlike shared global resources like the Internet and clean air, there's nothing compulsory about using or coding for the iPhone.
Because people really care what you're tired of hearing. (I'm tired of hearing about what you're tired of hearing about. And you're probably tired of hearing that I'm tired of hearing what you're tired of hearing about. Do you see where this leads?)
Anyway, that's not what this article is about; it's just a list of strange conditions that you agreed to when you signed up for the iPhone SDK. You can only sue Apple for $50, you can't talk about the SDK, you can never exercise your legal right to reverse-engineer any Apple product ever again, etc. Pretty strange, and not something a reasonable person would expect to find in this sort of agreement. That is all the article is saying.