One may believe that it's unscrupulous to undercut another company and co-opt their ideas without believing that the software patent system is tenable or just. Similarly, I believe lying is generally unethical; but I certainly don't believe there should be a law against lying.

"Repeal perjury laws!" - koeselitz

"Stealing" features is one thing, taking advantage of your control over a particular market to shut out the "competition" you "stole" said features from isn't justifiable in any way (IMHO).

Exactly. If Apple clones this thing and produces a better product, it's a good thing, because we all have better software to use. Likewise, if Microsoft were to produce a better browser than, say, Netscape, no one would complain.

When either company leverages its control over the market to exclude its competitors using mechanisms other than technical quality, that's a bad thing and needs to be condemned.

I'm waiting for the day when the App Store (et al) become classified as a "market", in the sense of "shutting competitors out of the market". On a desktop, Microsoft can't get away with making a browser (for example) and then locking out all other browsers. That's abuse of their monopoly position. Apple should be living up to the same standards in mobile.

I view mobile as more of a game console than a PC, but if Apple wants to insist that they're fully functional and "post-PC", they have to live by the same standards.

>I view mobile as more of a game console than a PC, but if Apple wants to insist that they're fully functional and "post-PC", they have to live by the same standards.

Apple does not insist the post-PC devices are fully functional. In fact, Jobs compared PCs to trucks and iOS devices to cars. By post-PC they imply that lockdown that comes with it.

Hey, it's Apple's marketplace - private property and all that. Nobody has a right to sell there.

Now, I also think this is a dick move, but it's because of dick moves like this that the patent and copyright systems exist in the first place, and why I think they need to be reformed rather than abandoned.

I wish that we could rely on the companies that are increasingly controlling semi-public commons like social networks and software repositories to have some integrity and respect for the roles that they are playing in this regard.

Never said it was illegal, just unethical.

I don't really like it either, but is this something that could be legislated somehow?

I don't think anyone is complaining about the theft of the feature here. It's the fact that Apple is leveraging its power as the ecosystem owner to harm the competition.

Everyone expects Apple to call the shots on their own app store to some extent, but it becomes unacceptable when well intentioned and heavily invested developers get screwed over by Apple making anticompetitive exceptions to their own, already volatile, set of rules.

It's one thing to steal an idea. It's another thing altogether to deny access to the market.

Software patents are bad, full stop.

This, however, has nothing to do with that: it's about consumer choice: making a better product and tempting people away with it is normal and healthy but abusing a lead in one market to prevent people from being able to make a choice in another is always bad.

This is the strongest criticism of Apple's app store policies: on the Mac if you get Karelia-ed that's not pleasant but it's a business risk you assume along with the possibility of any other large company entering the market. On iOS, Apple will preemptively kill your ability to sell a product before their competitor even ships, preventing your customers from even being able to decide that they prefer the app which ships with the OS.

It's the latter. It's unfortunate for these app developers, but it's not tough to predict when you look at Apple's history with the App Store.

Wait, how is this related to software patents?