Re:Five rational arguments against Apple's 3.3.1 policy
by marionogueira on Monday April 12, 2010 @04:31PM
(#1260277)
Now you are comparing apples to oranges. Proprietary and open approaches work very well in different scenarios (there hasn't been a lack of experiments in OSS for smartphones for example).
Some innovations, when developed via a proprietary approach bring huge costs and risks (and couldn't be done otherwise) and patents exist to protect the innovators from free loaders.
Now, that's how it should work in principle. If Apple is trying to game that model, it is not up to me to decide. There are courts for that.
And, as I said before, IP is far from being the only important cost when creating a new platform.
"Ruby on Rails" is copyrighted to its creator. So what? Why is it so? Isn't that an "asset" within the economics of OSS? It is, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it being copyrighted.
Anyway, my point is that none of this justifies the fact that the Rails guy is simply being utterly hypocrite, period.
Apple surely acts like it's having a special license to address this market (whatever that means).
So I don't know why we are having this conversation. Being opinionated doesn't mean you need to be a jerk that prevents others from playing on the same beach.