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Jimmy Wales Declares App Store Models a Threat
An anonymous reader writes "Wikipedia's chief says models such as the App Store on the iPad are not only a dangerous chokepoint to internet freedom, but that this is a real and immediate problem that's of more concern than the overblown what if's of the net neutrality debate."
Mod parent up! It's all in the implementation. A central point is only a problem when it's the ONLY source, and there are no viable alternatives, like the iPhone App Store.
That means sweatshops for iPods
The same sweatshops making your beloved Android phones as well.
All those hours spent gazing fondly at your picture at the top of every Wikipedia page. Installing the Jimmy Wales extension for Chromium, so I could see you everywhere. Knowing that you were looking just at me...
You have betrayed me, Jimmy, with your false generalization of software distribution systems. Words cannot express the anger and shame I feel.
I want my $2.50 back.
Just another proletarian malcontent.
But apps offer persistence; you don't have to reload them every time you want to use them.
One thing most apps also offer that the web browser doesn't is they work when you don't have internet access.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
"App Stores" are quite arguably a good thing. I know that I say a few words of thanks every time I type 'sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade' and everything automagically pulls from the repositories and does its thing. It absolutely curb-stomps the experience of a zillion separate updaters, obsolete library versions, and so forth.
On the other hand, an implementation where my apt-sources are cryptographically signed, and the BIOS refuses to boot if the list has been modified, would be a dark day indeed. That, to my mind, is the actual threat.
Although they haven't been called "app stores" in the past, package management systems kick ass, and are generally far superior in user experience to just grabbing random stuff off the internet and installing it. However, any entity who would restrict you exclusively to their own package management system fancies themselves your master and will soon be your rent-collecting landlord.
The basic issue at hand is that the majority of people don't have time for anything more than "it just works." What they want is appliance computing, and that's what App stores enable. This is the reason Apple has had so much success lately, and why they won't ever be loved by Slashdot. Personally, I'm happy to roll my own OpenBSD kernels for my media server and firewall at home, but when it comes to my phone I'll take Steve Jobs' walled garden. I don't have the time for anything else, and I really need my phone to "just work".
True general-purpose computing exists on the desktop and will continue to do so - but the consequences of that model will be continued security issues far in excess of the walled garden's, compatibility issues due to a functionally infinite number of hardware configurations to support, and abandonment by any developers unwilling to tolerate piracy/off-label usage of their applications [some might say 'good riddance' to the latter, but there's an awful lot of money and talent in that pool that will be spent making the walled gardens more attractive].
As far as the open source and freedom-to-code communities go, they can either approach this with ineffectual wailing and gnashing of teeth, or they can resolve to make this work for them. How? By building compelling services that are free-as-in-speech on general-purpose computers, and charging nominal fees for viewers targeting closed platforms, the proceeds from which are used to fund further development. I suspect we're about to witness a period of brutal natural selection in which the greater software ecosystem culls out those who refuse to embrace and leverage the new environment.
We'll find out, either way.
--Ryv