11.29.09
Developers Betrayed by Apple Are Uniting, Microsoft EULA Repels
Summary: Developers and assemblers driven away to a more autonomous environment where they are actually in control
Apple’s recent problems include the company’s relationship with developers, who are increasingly pissed off [1, 2]. Some are talking about a boycott and others have apparently united against Apple App store. The Inquirer writes:
A WEBSITE has sprung up offering those Iphone developers who have been refused a place on the Apple App store an outlet for their frustrations.
According to Adam White, who runs a British app developing company and set up the site, apprejections was set up as a place for disgruntled developers to gather together and whinge about Apple’s apparent agenda in keeping them out.
In related news, Dana Blankenhorn writes about “Death of the black box EULA” and he offers lip service to Richard Stallman.
But the black box EULA was always hopelessly one-sided. It was unfair to customers. And lawyers could provide no help — they had written the black box EULA and were sworn to uphold it.
So folks like Richard Stallman struck a blow against wealth and said software should be free. Not only free but visible so you could see it, smell it, kiss it, touch it. Fix it, improve it. And they wrote their own license, which they dubbed copyleft.
The war against the black box EULA was on.
So here we are several years down the line and the GNU/Linux system has already conquered some important areas of computing. It looks rather encouraging. █
“In our association we operate as a consortium, like the open source consortium. They want to promote open source and Linux. But if you begin from the PC you are afraid of Microsoft. They try to go to the smart phone or PDA to start again.”
–Li Chang, vice president of the Taipei Computer Association
