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EFF: Apple's Dev Agreement Means No EFF Mobile App For iOS
schwit1 writes The EFF launched a new app that will make it easier for people to take action on digital rights issues using their phone. The app allows folks to connect to their action center quickly and easily, using a variety of mobile devices. Sadly, though, they had to leave out Apple devices and the folks who use them. Why? Because they could not agree to the terms in Apple's Developer Agreement and Apple's DRM requirements.
Well, I'm sorry for the EFF, then, but everyone knows what the terms are to get an app in the iOS App Store.
This sounds, to me, like the EFF allowing slavish adherence to their principles to prevent them from doing something that might actually help real people in the real world advance those principles in meaningful ways.
Either that, or they just realized they could use it as a publicity stunt.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Right now, the app is an alert system designed to tell you when we have new campaigns
Okay, let me get this straight - the EFF has their knickers in a twist because they don't like Apple's terms for their walled garden. I'm sure Apple users are really upset that they can't download an app whose purpose is to spam them.
Trying to complain about spam when it comes to free apps is kind of like complaining about the smell of tomatoes in a ketchup factory.
The entire point of free apps is to hammer you with spam until you actually spend money. There's no getting away from that shit, so don't assume consumers are somehow upset. They agree to be spammed every single day with the other 73 apps installed.
It's an app for getting the EFF news bits to you quickly and easily. If you didn't want that, you sure as hell wouldn't have installed it in the first place.
After all, do you jump in the pool when you don't want to get wet?
This isnt just an EFF issue, although I can see them using this publicity to highlight the greater point. Apple TOS for the store is nothing short of a labor camp for developers. Apple owns content lock, stock, and barrel. Compared to Android they control far more of the application, its licenses, its content and how it interacts with users than many programmers are comfortable with. The cusp of their assertion is that you dont make money with your app, Apple makes money with your app. Youre just the fingers on the keys.
The app store highlights a controversial opinion but it must be said: Steve Jobs was no hacker, and he certainly wasnt the laureate inventor we all insist upon. he was just a very successful and very lucky businessman who was every bit as ruthless and myopic as Bill Gates. He just had a better PR team.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I had to switch from Linux back to Windows because I couldn't bear the spam.
The things they're complaining about are certainly restrictions on freedom... but they directly address security concerns and protect the user at the same time. It's a walled garden - good and bad. Why can't they simply write a web app for this instead, and stop their complaining?
There's a reason that Apple's devices are smooth, reliable, and stable... and you just can't have that when you live in the Wild West of completely open software. Yes, it means putting some trust in a company to get there, but I don't see that as any worse than the alternatives.
So EFF - I have made large donations to you in the past, but pick your battles and stop wasting my time and money on the bad fights.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
They sat down at a meeting, Junior PR Guy: "We should make some mobile apps!"
Senior Manager: "That's a great idea!"
Principle Lobbyist: "Apple's TOS sucks, we can't do that!"
Senior PR Guy: "Wait, wait... we can use this. We'll do the Android app, then make a public complaint that we can't release the iOS app because of Apple's TOS. But we don't actually have to build the iOS app."
Senior Manager: "I approve, go for it!"
The internet idiots are also voting for the very people they complain about and then reelect them as many times as they can, makes them even bigger idiots. And of course we have the fools who believe the republican and democrats are actually in opposition to each other.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
that was published in 2010.
Look at the last link in the post. It's from March 9, 2010.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
It's a labor camp where people are making money.
Go back to the day to app stores like getjar. Did you even know they existed? Did you know how people bought and sold software before app stores? Did you know how developers did?
I do, and it was expensive to sell. The app store led the way to what is almost a zero-cost way to sell your software. You didn't have to provide a few thousand copies of your software as "payment." You didn't have to print a box, manual, and make physical media.
Saying the app store and its execution weren't a great revolution shows that you are totally ignorant of how software was made and sold only a few years ago. Small developers for software really didn't exist. Nobody pays for shareware, and making a living as a small dev was basically impossible. The app store basically recreated the hobby developer market, period, and brought it to a level of mainstream that was never attained by normal PCs.
Better PR? Apple does have better PR. But Apple also does things that nobody else things will work, and makes it work well. Making something work well is substantially harder than you can imagine.
he entire point of free apps is to hammer you with spam until you actually spend money. There's no getting away from that shit, so don't assume consumers are somehow upset.
Maybe in Apple's world, but in the rest of the world this isn't true. While most "free" apps are spammy or coercive, there are tons that are not. They're just excellent apps, provided at no cost, including no advertising, in-app purchases, or data mining. I've written many such applications myself over the decades, and continue to do so.
No, more like these:
o http://www.change.org/p/depart...
o http://www.change.org/p/congre...
o http://www.change.org/p/tell-u...
o http://www.change.org/p/amnest...
o http://www.change.org/p/end-fg...
o http://www.change.org/p/sony-w...
o http://www.change.org/p/gap-in...
o http://www.change.org/p/genera...
o http://www.change.org/p/justic...
o http://www.change.org/p/govern...
o http://www.change.org/p/help-r...
o http://www.change.org/p/food-a...
o http://www.change.org/p/center...
Also, you can start here for many listings of change,org petitions that achieved their stated purpose. Don't forget to click the "Next" button at the bottom of the page. There are many pages of these beyond the few I took the time to list above.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
They're not clueless, just unwise. There is a big difference.
There is NO DIFFERENCE in terms of millions of people being easily infected in ways that are not really possibly with iOS devices.
You also blow over the whole app permission debacle on Android, where you have to agree to all permissions up front - even without outright malware that leaves just about everyone open to tons of spyware that happily lives in the official Google store.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
All of the terms cited are completely irrelevant to this particular app. They are general terms that all app developers have to adhere to. NONE of them would prevent the publication of their app. It's just that they don't like the terms. And, so, they don't have to accept them.
[quote]Contract restrictions aside, the final barrier was knowing that we’d be required to include a form of Digital Rights Management (DRM).[/quote]
That's not true. There's no DRM that authors are "required to include". The platform includes it for you. Yes, it is Apple's store, apps are sold on Apple's terms.
[quote]DRM means that Apple is putting technical restrictions on what you can and can’t do with your app. When we create tools for EFF, we want them to be broadly available to others to use, adapt, and customize. That’s why we work to make our technical projects based on free software, and avoid DRM.[/quote]
No, it doesn't. It means users can copy it willy-nilly. They have to download it from the store. They can't alter it. That is the agreement users have with Apple.
You want users to be able to modify the application? Fine. Put it in the public domain or publish under and open-source license. Publish the source code. Anybody who wishes to become an Apple developer can copy it, modify it, and publish it as their own. Or simply install and use on their own devices.
Did you look on the EFF page about this app?
Here ya go.
Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
You know, Apple has given out over $25B (billion, with a B) to its iOS developers since its inception. You don't have to like all the terms, frankly, but in the real world being too altruistic isn't going to do you any favors. Apple puts a premium on the security of its devices and has to continuously juggle the sensibilities of dozens large companies.
History is littered with open-source programmers with so little business sense they wind up living in a RV park their whole lives and retiring with zero savings. Or worse.
-Matt
I was wondering about that, I thought it had been removed but I thought perhaps there was a new version.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley