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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.
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.
Who modded this insightful? YouTube now supports direct H.264 video without the Flash wrapper. It works fine!
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