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FSF Response To Steve Jobs's Letter
boilednut writes "Steve Jobs's recent missive on the deficiencies of Adobe's Flash is still reverberating around the Internet. In this editorial, John Sullivan of the Free Software Foundation responds, arguing that Apple is presenting users with a false choice between Adobe's proprietary software and Apple's walled garden."
I'd be more interested in a response from Xiph on Job's email concerning Theora.
They have a comment from him here.
The problem with letting the market decide on fascism is that you no longer get to choose anything else.
That is what closed standards do.
Between a Flash app and an Apple app, the Apple app is the one that is more closed.
Plus, with an Apple app it's not just the proprietary API but the whole walled garden that comes with it.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
"free software guys" make some of the most popular Mac downloads actually.
So clearly there is an interest there from "Apple users". Even members of the flock tend to stray when they are given the liberty.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
H.264 is NOT an "open standard."
Err...
This may just be semantics, but it is an 'open standard' what it is not is 'open source'. There is a difference.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
> It is a real choice, but there are obviously more options to chose from than the enumerated two.
It's called "false choice" because the limit on the number of choices is artificial. The fact that you actually can choose one of the options is irrelevant. The important part is that you have more than just the choices presented to you and someone is using false rhetoric to distract you from that fact.
So no, it really is a false choice, even though you really can choose one of the options presented to you (as well as other options not shown).
Microsoft is restricted both by custom and the threat of government retribution from using the kind of strongarm tactics that Apple is getting away with in the market where it is most dominant, mobile "app" sales.
This comparison is specious. Microsoft positioned itself as the default OS and software for a whole industry, to be implemented on third-party hardware. Microsoft abused this position by forcing those third-parties to only support their software, and no others. This was but one of their anti-trust abuses.
Apple, on the other hand, make their own hardware and software ecosystem. They don't manipulate third parties to do anything, or prevent them from making products on other platforms.
Your idea that Microsoft is "restricted" is absurd. Yes, they had some impotent lawsuits leveled against them, but they certainly weren't holding back on abusing their monopoly in the 1990s. And what about gaming systems? The Xbox is more dominant in gaming consoles than Apple is in mobile phones, yet you rarely hear anybody decrying the closed Xbox platform.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Your argument might make sense if it were not for the fact that you can, in fact, watch YouTube videos in the iPhone os browser :-)
K
And Mozilla users don't get the option of H.264 on their platform. So, why no outrage at Mozila and Firefox?
I think that should be obvious - Mozilla has literally no way of offering H.264 without illegally implementing patented code.
And yet Firefox supports the proprietary Flash plugins. Outside of certain sites, the web isn't particularly "free."
Not support so much as allow; something that Apple refuses to do on the iPad and iPhone...
Who modded this insightful? YouTube now supports direct H.264 video without the Flash wrapper. It works fine!
The CB App. What's your 20?
Yes it does. http://www.youtube.com/html5