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EU Plans To Make Apple, Adobe and Others Open Up
FlorianMueller writes "After pursuing Microsoft and Intel, European Commission Vice-President Neelie Kroes is now preparing an initiative that could have an even greater impact on the IT industry: a European interoperability law that will affect not only companies found dominant in a market but all 'significant' players. In a recent interview, Mrs. Kroes mentioned Apple. Nokia, RIM and Adobe would be other examples. All significant market players would have to provide access to interfaces and data formats, with pricing constraints considered 'likely' by the commissioner. Her objective: 'Any kind of IT product should be able to communicate with any type of service in the future.' The process may take a few years, but key decisions on the substance of the bill may already be made later this year."
Will the customers of Apple and Microsoft in the USA also benefit from openness and interoperability?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
How is Apple an "abuser" of open technology? Their open technology was licensed under the BSD license which explicitly allows the type of stuff Apple is doing. If you don't like it then use the GPL or another license that has copyleft when you license your OSS.
You do realize that you don't have to use Apple products don't you? The main way to open up competition is to kill software patents and weaken copyrights.
When government fucks with free markets, the customer loses, always.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The EU can't formally legislate on what companies are allowed to do in the US market, but in practical terms, we're talking about a global market for IT products and (especially) Internet-based services. If vendors wanted to apply a different set of openness and interoperability standards in the US than in the EU, they would have to make a lot of efforts to keep the markets separated. They can do it, such as by refusing connections from certain sets of IP addresses, but it would be a major hassle. If many vendors did so, lawmakers in the US would also take a closer look and might consider a similar initiative to benefit customers in their own country.
Concerning Microsoft, the new law isn't even needed for them because they were already subjected to two antitrust proceedings in the EU on the grounds of being found dominant. More importantly, I'm not aware of them treating the US market any differently concerning interoperability with Samba than they treat the EU, even though it was only a European ruling.
The biggest benefit of the envisioned new EU law is that similar rules would also have to be respected by companies who may just not be close enough to a monopolist so that antitrust law can deal with them, but who are powerful enough (such as Apple, Adobe etc.) that it's a problem if they get away with too closed an approach. I don't mean to blame those companies for simply trying to maximize shareholder value or for adhering to certain closed philosophies -- but if antitrust law can't change their behavior, a new instrument is needed.
"Any kind of IT product should be able to communicate with any type of service in the future."
What does that even mean?
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
When the government starts dictating requirements and the price, we're all screwed.
if you don't know what it means, its probably something that you don't know much about?
SURELY NOT!!!!!
Non-interopability is holding back mankind's progress and preventing a free market in the provision of IT services. Creating a free market, by preventing artificial barriers to entry or competition, should enable more innovation and cheaper prices.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
Sometimes I wonder why I even read /. comments. They are so fucking predictable.
First off, you don't have to pay Apple anything to make Mac apps (besides owning a Mac and honestly if you don't own and use a Mac you have not business developing for it). There is a paltry $99 per year fee to make iPhone/iPod/iPad apps but no one is forcing you to make iPhone apps. On a side note, you have to pay RIM, Palm and Google money if you want to get in their app stores as well so they must be "open technology abusers" as well.
Here is some of Apple's open source code: http://www.opensource.apple.com/ Maybe you should download a few Gigs of source code before you start talking shit about something you don't know about.
Apple makes iOS which is based on OS X and puts it on iPhones, iPads and iPods. They took their own OS (which I might add has a large amount of open source code in it and more coming at fairly steady intervals). Read that again, "they took their own OS". The OS they spent years making and invested tons of time/money into. They give every person who owns an OS X license a free copy of their entire development stack: Xcode, Interface Builder, Dashcode, Instruments, Quartz Composer, PackageMaker, FileMerge, etc, etc, etc. They arguable provide the most complete set of frameworks available for any platform (Cocoa/CoreFoundation) to developers. You can build a Mac or iPhone app with GCD (open source). Apple has provided piles of code to the GCD project. You can now build Mac and iPhone apps with LLVM (open source). Apple has provided piles of code to the LLVM project.
So, given that information (and taking into account that Apple is a business that needs to make money to survive) why on earth do they need to allow someone to make Mac apps on Linux/Windows? You don't make any fucking sense man. None at all. Have you seen the cost of Microsoft's developer tools recently? And don't bother mentioning the "Express" versions of their software that don't allow commercial products.
To sum things up, many readers of /. would like every company on earth to make everything "open and free" no matter what the cost to said company. If a company does not do this, they will get piles of complaints from slashdotters who wouldn't do anything different even if said company did make something "open".
Why is the parent post modded troll? I'm sorry, but "troll" is not a substitute for "holds an opinion opposite to me".
The parent is entirely factually correct, and is talking about the very heart and idea of OSS: if you release something under the BSD licence, anyone can use it. If you release something under the GPL, anyone can use it as long as they follow the licence. So, when Apple uses BSD and GPL code, somehow it is "abuse"? Come on! You are either for the idea of OSS, or you are against it. You *cannot* be "oh, well, I love OSS, but Apple is not allowed to use any BSD code and get rich off it! That's just not allowed, but other companies can use BSD code since it is open source."
This also doesn't address the benefits the OSS community has seen from Apple. Far from being an "abuser" Apple has contributed an enormous amount to OSS - isn't that one of the benefits of a large entity getting involved in the community: provision of resources? Companies like IBM, Apple, Red Hat, Mozilla Foundation are promoting open source. You can't turn around and say "I don't like Apple, so they are abusing OSS!"
If you really hate them that much, write your own OSS code and release it under a modified BSD licence that permits anyone except Apple to use it.
I find it so interesting that Anonymous Coward constantly appears to have no concept of the difference between a government-enforced monopoly and a property right.
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I wonder which companies will run the calculations and decide that they will lose more profits opening up than they would by simply leaving the European market. While this sounds nice, companies who do a smaller percentage of business in Europe than they do elsewhere may decide it is worth it to keep their code locked. After all, no one will be able to implement interoperability exclusively in the EU, the US + rest of the world will get it too.
"Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordion." ~General Norman Schwarzkopf
It's hilarious how many see this as an "attack on free market".
Let me run a few facts down through your skulls:
1. There is no free market for IT goods referred to in the statement. The market that exists is heavily controlled and regulated, essentially being a monopoly market on per-product basis, or interconnected market where vendor uses monopoly control over one aspect of the market to openly destroy freeness in another market.
2. Neelie Kroes is probably the most pro-free market person you will find in EU. It's more of her life's philosophy then just a law enforcement on some level.
3. Suggestions include OPENING the CLOSED MARKET, to make it... that's right, more OPEN!
So do share, in what way is this "evil EU abusing US companies by closing free market"? I can see this being "good EU abusing evil US companies who like to close market to competition by forcing them to actually compete", but to actually claim the exact opposite, you have to either be ignorant, stupid, or have a deep vested interest in status quo.
Well then the question I would think is "should they be" and considering they own more than 70% of the market and has used that power to stifle competition I would say when it comes to multimedia that would be a big YES!
Just because Apple makes pretty iStuff doesn't mean they should be allowed to lock down the market or threaten competition. And I would say that iPod pretty much owns the PMP market hands down, which gives iTunes considerable leverage. Frankly I'm just waiting for the inevitable antitrust suit.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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