I don't care what you think, honestly. (And don't misjudge my tone here - I mean this in the friendliest way.)

I care about the fact that the US government has let this gorilla grow into King Kong and start throwing us into walls and trampling on our industry.

If this trend continues, the giants will swallow us completely. Our industry has always been special, and the barriers have historically been low. Now that Apple enjoys a position at the top, they're putting up fences and walls for the rest of us.

Apple is shitting into all of our faces, and we're being told to just take it.

Meanwhile, you celebrate that. Please don't.

It’s your choice whether you operate within the walls Apple has put up.

Why do you remain within them?

Because if you want to enter the mobile market you HAVE to? This “the customers will choose the best” thing has never been true, even in its source. The context is “in a fair competition between competing products” (which won’t be true again, because humans are not rational - otherwise marketing would not matter)

Also, it’s not like I have any chance ever to compete with Apple, even if I were to be the cleverest people on Earth.

You don’t have to ‘enter the mobile market’. That is a lifestyle choice. It’s not part of your identity.

At least you admit this is about your desire to sell things to Apple’s customer base.

You could always build for Android.

You can compete with Apple.

Obviously not on your own, but remember that when Apple was founded it was just a few people in a garage, whereas IBM was a global corporation.

You can choose to contribute to an alternative if you like.

As for customers ‘not choosing the best thing’: It sounds like you are saying that people don’t know what is good for them and you know better.

I disagree. I believe people value things differently from you or even I.

If we want them to choose an open mobile operating system, we need to build one that does the things they want and is open.

It’s not a desire, it is a must. There are certain kinds of application that simply would be meaningless, if they could not target 50% of the population. Like what would a messenger clone do with only half the people? (And I am fairly sure, that if nothing else, financially most apps or app ideas are in this category)

We agree on your last point, an open platform should finally emerge (and it is pretty much happening with pinephone) - but it would be a fairy tale to believe that it can gain foothold in the recent future against these monster corps

There are plenty of messenger apps that don’t have 50% of the US population.

iMessage is one of them, as is Facebook messenger.

There are many other messengers with far smaller user bases. There is no reason at all that a messaging app needs to address 50% of the population immediately.