propr iEtary
When talking about government, one often discusses a political spectrum - on the far left, you've got anarchy (and relatively moderate things like socialism), and on the far right, you've got totalitarianism, authoritarianism, fascism, and all of those fun things. Advocates of the left tend to believe that commodities should be shared and that having a centralized government only leads to corruption. Advocates of the right believe that people in large groups cannot be trusted to do what's best for them, so one individual (or a small group of individuals) should hold absolute power over the masses. Obviously, both of these approaches (on the extreme ends of things) have their flaws. The far left ends up not being able to supply goods of sufficient quality to everyone, whereas the far right can easily descend into corruption.
Now, let's look at a (seemingly) different case: free software versus closed-source software. Or, to look at a more narrow case, Linux versus Apple. To summarize (and I might not be entirely accurate, but I think I'm getting the general idea of things across), the open source movement wants everything to be available in the public domain, whereas Apple wants to keep everything to themselves, specialize their code to their own engine, and make scads of money. These are roughly analogous to the political spectrum - decentralized freedom versus centralized control. It's interesting to see how they play out.
Linux is a free operating system available to anyone. Or rather, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Slackware, ArchLinux, Red Hat, Fedora, and about a hojillion other distributions are free operating systems (well, red hat has you pay for support or something, but whatever) available to anyone. You can run a window manager (usually using X11, but not necessarily) such as gnome, KDE, ion3, awesome, fvwm, or about a couple more hojillion other things. Installing linux ranges from supereasy to an enormous pain in the ass. Gentoo expects you to know a fair amount about getting around in your system to be able to install it, whereas Ubuntu aims to be trivially easy to install. But even Ubuntu doesn't work 100% of the time - people still can have trouble with it, whether it's with installation, updates, sound, video, or (you guessed it) one of a hojillion other issues that can happen based on your hardware. And that's just the problem - linux has to be able to work on anything - anything. So if I have a Dell, an Alienware, a Macbook, and a custom-built desktop, I should be able to install linux on any of them, despite their different hardware configurations. Unsurprisingly, this can lead to problems. So while it is technically available to anyone who wants to run it, it's not guaranteed to work well, or even at all. This is true about a lot of open source software (or free things in general). While they are free, they aren't necessarily any good.
On the other end of the spectrum, we've got Apple. Everything is closed - proprietary code, closed hardware, and now, you can only write apps for it using like 3 languages. But on a brighter note, everything works. Like, actually works. You don't have to worry about installing anything - it's already there when you buy it. Unless you're trying to make a hackintosh, which isn't officially supported, so you're on your own there anyway. I'm not saying it's perfect - any large software system is bound to have its share of bugs - but speaking from personal experience, OSX is the most pleasant OS I've ever run (we'll see if it stays that way after I've had my macbook for several months). The phrase I've heard used to describe it is "it just works," and from what I've seen, it does. But what about the closedness?
In my opinion (which is admittedly fairly uneducated in these matters), Apple does some of their stuff right and some of their stuff wrong. I like the idea of having a specific (small) set of hardware that your software is expected to work on. It seems that it allows them to spend less time worrying about compatibility and more time working on having nice thing. On the other hand, I agree with the open source movement's idea that everything should be publicly available. Why not have their code be public? People can see how it's done, modify it on their own, and if Apple likes the modifications, they can incorporate it into the official version. Of course, the answer is that Apple wants to keep making money, but I'm talking idealistically, not practically. This article, while maybe a bit optimistic, sums up what I'm trying to say.
Another source of controversy has been their policy on allowing apps into the app store. They have pretty much arbitrary veto power over any app ever, and some people argue that this is used unfairly. While this may be true in some cases, I don't understand the huge moral deal people are making out of it. Let's add a few levels of abstraction, shall we? Say you are a peddler who has some handcrafted trinkets for sale. You bring these trinkets to a merchant who has a reputation for being able to make peddlers (like you!) some money. The merchant examines your trinkets and rejects them, giving you some bullshit reason about eigenvectors and economic strata. Do you then mount a crusade against this merchant, telling everyone he is evil for not selling whatever the hell it was that you made, or do you suck it up and go back to selling things on your own? If you do the former, you're probably a douche! This slashdot article is what made me think about this. Is it somewhat capricious of Apple to reject these apps? Yeah, maybe. But it's in the goddamn license that they are allowed to reject things if they think it's offensive. It might seem over the line with an award-winning artist, but if someone submitted an app that was a game where you play a dick that has to shit on other dicks in order to win (and the final boss is like a floating part of fake tits or something, I dunno), well, it's pretty obvious that that app should be banned under those terms. The point is that the app store is not a public forum - it is Apple's store where Apple chooses the rules to play by. Banning an app isn't censorship; it's Apple exercising its right to maintain its own image, just like the merchant is exercising his right to determine what he sells.
Well, that's my two cents. Or rather, that's my zero cents/$1999.99, depending on if you're with the open source movement or Apple. I guess I didn't quite stress that I don't think either side is entirely right - while Apple's actions are less evil than I think everyone is making them out to be, they still do some pretty silly things. And while a lot of open source software does suck, the good stuff gives you a surprising amount of flexibility in what you can do. Thoughts?
Now, let's look at a (seemingly) different case: free software versus closed-source software. Or, to look at a more narrow case, Linux versus Apple. To summarize (and I might not be entirely accurate, but I think I'm getting the general idea of things across), the open source movement wants everything to be available in the public domain, whereas Apple wants to keep everything to themselves, specialize their code to their own engine, and make scads of money. These are roughly analogous to the political spectrum - decentralized freedom versus centralized control. It's interesting to see how they play out.
Linux is a free operating system available to anyone. Or rather, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Slackware, ArchLinux, Red Hat, Fedora, and about a hojillion other distributions are free operating systems (well, red hat has you pay for support or something, but whatever) available to anyone. You can run a window manager (usually using X11, but not necessarily) such as gnome, KDE, ion3, awesome, fvwm, or about a couple more hojillion other things. Installing linux ranges from supereasy to an enormous pain in the ass. Gentoo expects you to know a fair amount about getting around in your system to be able to install it, whereas Ubuntu aims to be trivially easy to install. But even Ubuntu doesn't work 100% of the time - people still can have trouble with it, whether it's with installation, updates, sound, video, or (you guessed it) one of a hojillion other issues that can happen based on your hardware. And that's just the problem - linux has to be able to work on anything - anything. So if I have a Dell, an Alienware, a Macbook, and a custom-built desktop, I should be able to install linux on any of them, despite their different hardware configurations. Unsurprisingly, this can lead to problems. So while it is technically available to anyone who wants to run it, it's not guaranteed to work well, or even at all. This is true about a lot of open source software (or free things in general). While they are free, they aren't necessarily any good.
On the other end of the spectrum, we've got Apple. Everything is closed - proprietary code, closed hardware, and now, you can only write apps for it using like 3 languages. But on a brighter note, everything works. Like, actually works. You don't have to worry about installing anything - it's already there when you buy it. Unless you're trying to make a hackintosh, which isn't officially supported, so you're on your own there anyway. I'm not saying it's perfect - any large software system is bound to have its share of bugs - but speaking from personal experience, OSX is the most pleasant OS I've ever run (we'll see if it stays that way after I've had my macbook for several months). The phrase I've heard used to describe it is "it just works," and from what I've seen, it does. But what about the closedness?
In my opinion (which is admittedly fairly uneducated in these matters), Apple does some of their stuff right and some of their stuff wrong. I like the idea of having a specific (small) set of hardware that your software is expected to work on. It seems that it allows them to spend less time worrying about compatibility and more time working on having nice thing. On the other hand, I agree with the open source movement's idea that everything should be publicly available. Why not have their code be public? People can see how it's done, modify it on their own, and if Apple likes the modifications, they can incorporate it into the official version. Of course, the answer is that Apple wants to keep making money, but I'm talking idealistically, not practically. This article, while maybe a bit optimistic, sums up what I'm trying to say.
Another source of controversy has been their policy on allowing apps into the app store. They have pretty much arbitrary veto power over any app ever, and some people argue that this is used unfairly. While this may be true in some cases, I don't understand the huge moral deal people are making out of it. Let's add a few levels of abstraction, shall we? Say you are a peddler who has some handcrafted trinkets for sale. You bring these trinkets to a merchant who has a reputation for being able to make peddlers (like you!) some money. The merchant examines your trinkets and rejects them, giving you some bullshit reason about eigenvectors and economic strata. Do you then mount a crusade against this merchant, telling everyone he is evil for not selling whatever the hell it was that you made, or do you suck it up and go back to selling things on your own? If you do the former, you're probably a douche! This slashdot article is what made me think about this. Is it somewhat capricious of Apple to reject these apps? Yeah, maybe. But it's in the goddamn license that they are allowed to reject things if they think it's offensive. It might seem over the line with an award-winning artist, but if someone submitted an app that was a game where you play a dick that has to shit on other dicks in order to win (and the final boss is like a floating part of fake tits or something, I dunno), well, it's pretty obvious that that app should be banned under those terms. The point is that the app store is not a public forum - it is Apple's store where Apple chooses the rules to play by. Banning an app isn't censorship; it's Apple exercising its right to maintain its own image, just like the merchant is exercising his right to determine what he sells.
Well, that's my two cents. Or rather, that's my zero cents/$1999.99, depending on if you're with the open source movement or Apple. I guess I didn't quite stress that I don't think either side is entirely right - while Apple's actions are less evil than I think everyone is making them out to be, they still do some pretty silly things. And while a lot of open source software does suck, the good stuff gives you a surprising amount of flexibility in what you can do. Thoughts?