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Blackberry CEO: Net Neutrality Means Mandating Cross-Platform Apps

Posted by timothy on from the fantasy-world-of-atlas-shrugged dept.

DW100 writes In a bizarre public blog post the CEO of BlackBerry, John Chen, has claimed that net neutrality laws should include forcing app developers to make their services available on all operating systems. Chen even goes as far as citing Apple's iMessage tool as a service that should be made available for BlackBerry, because at present the lack of an iMessage BlackBerry app is holding the firm back. Some excerpts from Chen's plea: Netflix, which has forcefully advocated carrier neutrality, has discriminated against BlackBerry customers by refusing to make its streaming movie service available to them. Many other applications providers similarly offer service only to iPhone and Android users. ... Neutrality must be mandated at the application and content layer if we truly want a free, open and non-discriminatory internet. All wireless broadband customers must have the ability to access any lawful applications and content they choose, and applications/content providers must be prohibited from discriminating based on the customer’s mobile operating system. Since "content providers" are writing code they think makes sense for one reason or another (expected returns financial or psychic), a mandate to write more code seems like a good way to re-learn why contract law frowns on specific performance.

17 of 307 comments (clear)

  1. Bye_bye, Blackberry by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I very much doubt that iMessage will save Blackberry from landing in the bit bucket.

    1. Re:Bye_bye, Blackberry by jbolden · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It is even worse than that in terms of this post. Their messaging service for many years was far and away the leader. It was so good in fact that the carriers were offering to give them institutional support by making BBM into SMS 2.0 providing they would go cross platform (i.e. a percentage of all SMS fees for many years). RIM/ BlackBerry turned them down.

    2. Re:Bye_bye, Blackberry by g0bshiTe · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They aren't 100% guaranteed to work on your preferred platform either.

      --
      I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
    3. Re:Bye_bye, Blackberry by unrtst · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's part of what I can here to say/read.
      They're citing lack of a blackberry version of iMessage as an example, and yet where are the iPhone, Android, Symbian, etc versions of BBM!?!?!

      Regardless, their argument is retarded.
      "...if we truly want a free, open and non-discriminatory internet", then we actually have to allow any and all apps to use it in any way they want, rather than forcing them to make their thing available everywhere (and how far does "everywhere" even go!?!? My PC? Mac, Windows, Linux, BSD, Solaris, my ancient HP-UX box, the obscure vm's I run, the roku, game systems (ps3, xbox), what about older game systems (nintendo 64, DS, etc)). There's so much wrong about BB's statement that it makes my head hurt trying to figure out which is most wrong.

  2. Please develop for my dying platform! by MachineShedFred · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Really?

    Net Neutrality means mandating that developers and services must create something that works on your dying platform? Does that mean that NetFlix will have to make sure it works with Symbian too? How about PocketPC 2003?

    What an idiot.

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    1. Re:Please develop for my dying platform! by bondsbw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What is a platform?

      Is HTML/JS/CSS a platform? Does an application's availability via HTTP/HTML constitute bringing the service to every platform?

      What if Blackberry refuses to provide a compatible HTML browser? Is it they who are in breach, or should developers still have to provide an app for their alternative native platform?

      Suppose I port the application, but leave out some feature. Does that count? What if the feature I leave out is something like the "Investor Relations" link at the bottom? What if the feature I leave out is video? What constitutes an acceptably feature-complete version of Netflix?

      --
      All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
    2. Re:Please develop for my dying platform! by zieroh · · Score: 3, Insightful

      He is not an idiot, he is a politician trying to twist the meaning of the word "Net" and make it mean "Application".

      That makes him an idiot.

      --
      People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
    3. Re:Please develop for my dying platform! by gstoddart · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No, he's a CEO of a failing company who is acting like a whiny moron who thinks the rest of the world should be responsible for keeping his company in business.

      It amounts to "hey, we made our crap software that nobody wants available for your platform, so now you have to support our platform".

      He's an idiot.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    4. Re:Please develop for my dying platform! by roman_mir · · Score: 1, Insightful

      So called 'positive rights' are entitlements that require that governments strips rights from some people in order to provide those 'free' entitlements to others. However I disagree fundamentally that the so called 'net neutrality' is a right (or a 'negative right' as you put it).

      Net Neutrality is an entitlement, where people are trying to use force of government to strip rights from individual ISPs to shape their traffic on their networks the way they see fit. This is destructive to the competition, this is destructive to the actual human rights, this means giving more power to already overbearing government monopoly on violence. There are no 'rights' there at all.

      If I build a private network and sell connectivity to my network I set my rules and then a government starts mandating how I provide the said connectivity, that I cannot come up with my own rules and ways to provide the service, that's stripping my rights as a private property owner from me by the violence of the state, that is not a right, that's the exact opposite of a right. Some people are more equal than others, ha?

      --
      You can't handle the truth.
    5. Re:Please develop for my dying platform! by zieroh · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why are you for net neutrality and against app neutrality (or whatever it's called)? This CEO should be applauded for bringing up this issue.

      Because they are fundamentally different than each other. Net neutrality requires inaction on the part of the ISPs, i.e. "do not favor one service over another". This so-called "app neutrality" requires that anyone developing an application is obligated to provide it for all platforms, independent of whether it is in their best interests to do so, and independent of whether the developer has the resources to meet that obligation.

      It is only by ignoring this fundamental difference that you can even attempt to equate net neutrality and "app neutrality". It is, however, intellectually dishonest to do so.

      --
      People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
  3. Open protocols by kthreadd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The solution is not that Apple should take iMessage to every platform out there, but that we start using open protocols instead like XMPP.

    1. Re:Open protocols by nine-times · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah, I don't think his particular argument quite works. I don't think this is about "net neutrality" as I've heard the idea be defined. I don't think Apple should be forced to develop apps for other platforms.

      However, I do think that communication protocols, file formats, and related standards should be open and free (both gratis and libre). That is, should be as in "ought to be". I'm not necessarily opposed to legal requirements for making these things free, but I think it would have to be carefully crafted to make sure it didn't include loopholes or unintended consequences. In doing so, you'd probably need to limit the requirements to certain kinds of things.

      In abstract, if there were a law that said, in effect, "Built-in messaging applications on mobile phones must use protocols that are available to developers, royalty free, such that a 3rd party developer can create a client on another platform capable of communicating with those messaging applications with the same capabilities as the native client," I think I would probably support something like that. On the other hand, it would be silly to make a law that says, "All application developers and service providers must support all platforms."

  4. Free and Open by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Blackberry's operating system is proprietary and closed. Why would they be demanding support for their platform and throwing words like 'free' and 'open' around? Ridiculous.

    1. Re:Free and Open by Zeromous · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is a pretty unqualified statement. QNX is a rock solid embedded OS and is already everywhere. Buying QNX is why blackberry is still alive today to spout such garbage.

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      ---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
  5. Yeah, and don't forget Palm! by monkeyzoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Absolutely. Companies should be forced to write their software for any single person that might want it on their hardware. Not only Blackberry, but also Nokia, and since I have an original Palm device, Apple should be forced to write all their apps for me too. And support them. And make sure they are bug free. They must expend the resources to build teams for this, and of course, it should be free to me. Oh, and I also have a a Radio Shack pocket computer from the '80s, and so everyone should have to write apps for that too. Otherwise, I am being oppressed.

  6. Action vs. inaction by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This just seems bizarre.

    Net neutrality is about forcing inaction: an ISP is already providing service to a customer, but is not allowed to actively discriminate by not providing the same level of service under various conditions.

    What Chen seems to be proposing here is a requirement for action on the part of every app developer in the world, requiring them by law to spend their resources producing additional software regardless of any desire or commercial viability.

    I think we can safely predict how this one ends. It's amazing his PR people didn't stop him before it started, though, because IMHO it just reinforces the perception that BlackBerry is desperate and struggling to stay in business by any means it can find.

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    1. Re:Action vs. inaction by Stormy+Dragon · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Net Neutrality isn't just inaction anymore. The term has now been expanded to include things like, if the Netflix-Comcast interchange is getting saturated, Comcast has a positive duty build out more capacity to handle the full flow.

      The Blackberry guy is now expanding it again. People who work in development and realize what this would mean for small developers are rightly horrified, but the thing is, that's how government regulation works. If net neutrality becomes law, it will end up getting used to cover things that aren't strictly related because it's going to be interpreted by lawyers, legislators, and judges that don't understand technology.