All computer users deserve software freedom. Switching from Adobe Acrobat to Foxit Reader is moving from one proprietor/monopolist to another hoping that the switch makes users more safe. Without software freedom one cannot inspect the program to see what it does (a spy program that has no bugs is still doing spying on users), change the program to make it better, or help one's community by distributing the improved version. Proprietary software is untrustworthy by default. We don't fully know what it does nor should we trust it does only what we want it to do.
I would be interested to know what licensing decisions went into freetype. Freetype is licensed under two licenses: the GNU GPL and a license that allows proprietary derivatives. I would need to know more about this particular situation before I could say more about freetype's licensing beyond the obvious consequences. But this freetype situation is a good opportunity to look at a more general case, which I'll try to elaborate on below.
Generally, this is part of the reason why people license their work under the GNU GPL—a strongly copylefted free software license—alone. Those who license under the GPL generally don't mind people developing commercial software based on GPL'd work, the free software movement is not at all anti-commercial software. The objection is against building proprietary derivative works: software that doesn't share their work with the community on terms that respect users' software freedom, just like the code that shared with the derivative work developers. The GPL says to share and share alike and this helps create and maintain a commons in which we can all share while still respecting our private right to run, share, and modify.
We can increase the odds that proprietors have to decide between writing their own code and building on a strongly-copylefted code that would have made derivatives free software as well. Just to forestall an anticipated oft-repeated objection: "Force" is not the issue here as there is no forcing developers to develop based on strongly-copylefted free software in the first place. Developers can always write their own code.
As it is, non-copylefted free software licenses typically turn developers into charitable contributors for proprietors. We've known about this issue for a long time but appeals to popularity ("think of all the users you'll have!") instead of improving the free software commons sometimes win out. The FSF has sage advice on this ground:
When a businessman tempts you with "more popularity," he may try to convince you that his use of your program is crucial to its success. Don't believe it! If your program is good, it will find many users anyway; you don't need to feel desperate for any particular users, and you will be stronger if you do not. You can get an indescribable sense of joy and freedom by responding, "Take it or leave it--that's no skin off my back." Often the businessman will turn around and accept the program with copyleft, once you call the bluff.
Friends, free software developers, don't repeat old mistakes! If we do not copyleft our software, we put its future at the mercy of anyone equipped with more resources than scruples. With copyleft, we can defend freedom, not just for ourselves, but for our whole community.
Apparently any improvements proprietors make to freetype code are only shared with the free software community if the proprietor so chooses. Assuming they share any changes at all, those changes may be shared under terms that make them unusable to free software projects: perhaps their changes will implement code that is covered by patents making those changes useless even if the changes are licensed to share, or the changed code may be licensed in other ways that is useless to FLOSS (such as binary-only implementations under a proprietary license). In this instance, Microsoft has no obligation to share under terms useful to FLOSS as a fair exchange for distributing work based on freetype code that was so generously shared with Microsoft.
The answer is simple: the API terms are there to build at least two monopolies out of what could clearly become multiple commonses: no competing app store and no competing developers for apps (whether Apple holds the copyright or not). Apple has a long track record of denying users software freedom. The terms of their app store agreement is hardly surprising.
The more interesting question is why do application developers put up with this. The real power is in the application developer's hands; developers are submitting to the horrible iPhone Developer Program License Agreement. Why? I'm guessing the reason is similar to the lottery logic that persuades millions to buy into a scheme where the vast majority lose to prop up very few winners. Convincing people "you gotta play to win" instead of the more accurate "you're most likely gonna lose". In other words, it's a question of values: developers are taught to value popularity over all things, including their own software freedom and the software freedom of their users. Remember that if an application copyright holder chooses to agree to the aforementioned license and Apple denies them a place in their app store, the copyright holder has agreed not to distribute in competing app stores. This is one power one would normally have under copyright law and it is signed away in an attempt to prop up Apple's app store.
Who teaches them these values? Some open source movement proponents, to be sure; that movement was designed to never bring up ethics and that movement shuns talking about computer user's freedoms to run (recall that Apple can "kill" a deployed iPhone app on any non-jailbroken iPhone), share, and modify. Proprietors, including Apple, like it that way. This arrangement helps Apple more easily address an audience of talented software developers that might look at a digital phone as another general-purpose computing device which ought to properly be the property of its owner. As the EFF points out:
Overall, the Agreement is a very one-sided contract, favoring Apple at every turn. That's not unusual where end-user license agreements are concerned (and not all the terms may ultimately be enforceable), but it's a bit of a surprise as applied to the more than 100,000 developers for the iPhone, including many large public companies. How can Apple get away with it? Because it is the sole gateway to the more than 40 million iPhones that have been sold. In other words, it's only because Apple still "owns" the customer, long after each iPhone (and soon, iPad) is sold, that it is able to push these contractual terms on the entire universe of software developers for the platform.
This is another reason why people need software freedom for the firmware in their computers. Apparently we need to be able to inspect, share, and modify this software. Coreboot is a great project along these lines.
The Timesonline server took too long to respond for me (now it works) and I missed the quote at the end of that article where the unnamed Univ. spokesman said that "UCL has no jurisdiction over the site, as it is not UCL-hosted.". Now I see that that aspect of the issue isn't the center of this debate. It's good that Martell hosted his site elsewhere.
That would mean students are old enough to know that they should buy an account at an ISP for their site. This means the students can enjoy freedom from University policy/control, own the domain name and site code, and keep the site up after the student is no longer affiliated with the University. In the US one can get this level of service for under $10/month; it's hard for some university organizations to economically justify competing with that low price.
I don't know UCL's complete logic here, and I don't represent them. But in the US many public universities are facing hard financial times right now. Given fiscal realities tough choices have to be made about how to prioritize dwindling resources including staff time. It's not reasonable to expect that some for-fun project is going to get the attention and resources of staff and faculty work (which is rapidly being homogenized into whatever services can be delivered campus-wide, not custom setups for a particular person/group).
Corporate policy that apparently Apple has some say over. Any chance Apple's reach extends to permanently improving all of their supplier's working conditions? Since we're talking about Apple, I'd like to see Apple do more across the board so this doesn't become some temporary improvement aimed at patching relationships among those that don't look too closely at how computers are made; an improvement that fuels speculation like what we see in the/. headline: "damage control". Those worker's deaths cannot be "cheapened". If you truly think Apple's acts are good and noble, then what's truly disrespectful here is how it had to go this far to get any of Foxconn's contractors to act. Society needs to look at these things more systemically and examine who benefits, who's in charge here, and whether that's right and proper for a prosperous citizenry, not get lost in petty distractions over righteous indigence.
I hope yours was a simple misread rather than a tactic to gain sympathy points for appearing more compassionate. I said that one can hold multiple views of Apple at the same time, distinguishing the good and the bad that corporation does while seeing that corporations activities in context. As much as I regret the Foxconn worker's deaths, I fear that same system which led to their deaths is still in place, leaving the power relationship as corporations would like it to be.
I think your summary is simplistic. Apple's move here is nice but it does nothing to give their users freedoms they deserve (like controlling their own computers so they're not victims of Apple's "kill switch" where Apple can remotely deny any user some program on Apple's whim). This move does nothing to provide developers with reasonable terms for distributing programs on their app store (EFF has highlighted the awful terms). And Apple can decide to discontinue this at any moment, returning the workers to their former state of more unfair pay.
Ultimately decent pay for work should not be subject to corporate largesse. A living wage should be guaranteed by all governments so businesses can't take advantage of workers and maintain an environment that apparently leads to suicides. It's the system in which Apple has the power to do this that deserves challenge; that system must be changed so people can make gadgets and enjoy a living wage at the same time. A profit-before-everything race to the bottom won't do that.
I'd rather not look at this in terms of what one proprietor does today but across what is possible and what is fair. I think it's unwise to rely on corporate largesse for getting back published improvements to programs I wrote. I shared my published improvements with them, they can share their published improvements with me and do so in a form I have a chance of being able to incorporate into my variant of the program. That sounds fair to me. Leaving it up to proprietors to share and share alike with me is treating a business like a charity which I will not do. I want to be equals with anyone who distributes the program.
None of those issues you raise in any way rebut what I said. It's a long series of non-sequiturs none of which address software freedom.
The Opera software company is a publicly traded company, but being for free software does not mean one is anti-business (quite the contrary, actually).
Compliance with standards is nice but software freedom is more important as free software can be inspected and improved by lots of people whereas proprietary software can only be inspected and improved by the proprietor. Features, size, execution speed are all conveniences none of which measure up to the social importance of software freedom. I can, after all, have the quickest, smallest, least buggy spyware around whose license doesn't let anyone but the proprietor remove the spying features and share the improved program with others. That's simply not a good tradeoff. It's socially wise to foster software freedom even if it means putting work into improving a larger, slower, and more buggy program because software freedom means social solidarity with programs that can become better. If one can't program (like most computer users don't), one could get someone else to do that job, contribute money or time on a less technical but still needed task (translations, art, documentation, support). There's business opportunities in improving free software.
Finally, your last point is simultaneously irrelevant, an appeal to popularity (which itself is yet another misprioritization of goals), and conjecture.
Their goal is to promote OSS and they can do that a lot better by contacting companies and convincing them to comply and contribute, rather than costing those companies cash out of pocket and making them scared of OSS in future.
Actually the Free Software Foundation's goals have nothing to do with "OSS" (open source software) and should not be confused with that movement's goals. The FSF predates the open source movement, the Open Source Initiative, and the FSF is appropriately critical of the open source movement's goals. People from the FSF (most notably Richard Stallman) are the principal authors of the GPLs, and Stallman makes a sharp distinction between the free software movement (which he founded) and the open source movement. You can find clear descriptions of that difference and practical consequences of that difference in almost any of his talks online or the essay I linked to.
Opera is also proprietary; users give up their software freedom, something all computer users deserve. As a practical matter you apparently can't get the better addon system or the rich addon library Firefox enjoys without also having software freedom. I'll take the free software and the verifiable level of trust I enjoy with Firefox knowing lots of skilled hackers work on that program in a way where hackers can vet each other's work (including me, should I so decide to engage in that way).
At the same time, on more important life and death issues (such as war and threats of war, health care, trillions for corporations while citizens go hungry, civil liberties) this administration shares a lot in common with the previous administration, an administration that even former supporters grew to dislike. In my congressional district people know that trillions on occupation hurts us at home in many ways. Drupal code contributions can't measure up to the impact of keeping that much money in our country solving domestic issues. President Obama won't get me to change my mind with something as trivial as this.
Actually free software stands in contradiction to "Every manufacturer has the monopoly on his own products." because free software means users have the freedom (permission) to develop competing products based on the free software they run. Hardware manufacturers are beginning to appear which allow one to develop competing products in much the same way. Apple's restrictions in their iPhone API license agreement are unusually hostile to distributing applications Apple does not approve of (see section 7.3 which says rejected iPhone applications can't be distributed anywhere else). The thing to note about Fiore's second bite at the Apple (so to speak) is that Fiore has an audience large enough to complain. Others who would use their freedom of speech (permission) by "ridiculing public figures" won't get a second chance because nobody will chat up their misfortune at choosing to deal with such an arbitrary power.
One wonders if Apple would go after him for doing such a thing. As the EFF shows, you're never on sure ground with Apple because Apple accepts/rejects app submissions seemingly arbitrarily. And they are working off of a history of legally threatening people on baseless claims and profound misreads of policy. I don't think it a stretch to wonder if Apple would consider a different version of the application they refused to distribute to be a violation of section 7.3 of their most recent revision of the Apple iPhone Developer Program License Agreement which aims to stop developers from distributing rejected iPhone applications via other means. Granted, a different program would no doubt use different API and possibly offer users entirely different features, a different look and feel, and it could even be distributed under a FLOSS license (or "FOSS" as Apple prefers to call it—can't have people thinking about "libre" as that might lead to people inquire what software freedom means!), but from Apple's perspective: there's a monopoly to sustain here.
Here's hoping you expected no different from any proprietor. That is what makes this brouhaha so funny: a supporter of one proprietor complaining about the adverse impact of another proprietor's power to avoid commodification. Imagine that: the software freedoms users deserve and ought to have for all published software so we can strengthen social solidarity are also useful for developers!
All proprietors are the same at this level: User's software freedoms aren't on the menu no matter which proprietor you choose. That's why choosing proprietary software is merely selecting a new master.
Of course the GAO is a government office, so if I'm not supposed to trust the government...
I'd rather not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I can think of plenty of places where the government is trustworthy: I trust them to bend over for corporate power in a heartbeat. Corporations no doubt benefit from a sham stamp of approval like "Energy Star" to help sell products. Private organizations do plenty of harm (Dow Chemical and Bhopal, war profiteering, financing campaigns that weaken consumer protections, the movie "The Corporation" is filled with more examples) and that harm is (by design) beyond any democratic relief or judicial oversight; we don't need more of that. On issues of life and death, war and peace, it's clear that the US government is plenty willing to keep wars, banks, and now HMOs financed with taxpayer dollars while its citizens suffer; plenty of examples of government-corporate working against the people. People need to fix this not think government is something to throw away. The power of government can be turned to benefit its people.
Mozilla's decision is no more "political" than the proprietors decision to go with other codecs that cannot be freely redistributed everywhere. The effect of those politics on user's freedom is what is important and how these situations differ.
But that doesn't address whether another organization should have access to this data in the first place which is the heart of this issue. Hosting conveniences aside, the best counterargument to using any other hosted service will be close examination of the consequences of one's chosen hoster(s) (and whomever the hoster(s) deems worthy) having access to one's data. Eben Moglen's Talk on "Freedom in the Cloud" seems remarkably apropos here.
And that's relevant how? Most users haven't been taught about software freedom; one cannot expect them to consider concepts they've never learned about despite how it affects their ability to participate in a community of equals limited only by what they want to put into it. Teaching people about software freedom is work the free software movement needs to do. But one's freedom shouldn't depend on what most users know.
The linux-libre project removes binary blobs from its variant of the Linux kernel. I'm not convinced that most users' variants of the Linux kernel are entirely free software.
Since I don't oppose commercial free software, I tend to agree. All free software is commercial since any of it may be distributed for a fee (otherwise it would not qualify as free software) and any of it may be used by a business to pursue their ends. I figure that to be anti-commercial software is to be anti-free software. The free software movement is not anti-business. We're pro-software freedom—people should be free to run, inspect, share, and modify all published computer software. So, as Jeremy Allison said in TFA, "Keep our eyes on the prize -- we keep doing this [free software development] and we will end up with a world where, yes, there may be more proprietary gardens but we can ignore them by creating our own content, creating our own software and creating our own hardware. Let's build the world that we want to see.". Indeed, that's what's gotten us this far and that's how we should keep going.
We need to teach people about the software freedom too: share the values of our community of cooperative collaboration, including teaching them that paying for free software is a good thing; it helps make more free software!
Re:And we're trusting you because....
on
Hiding From Google
·
· Score: 1
Not trying to come across as a Google apologist but [...]
I would not recommend obfuscating the difference between software we're free to inspect, share, and modify versus software we're disallowed from inspecting, sharing, and modifying. The known and knowable is simply not the same as the unknowable. You risk coming off as an apologist for proprietary software, no matter the proprietor. As for services and their adherence to stated policy: policies can and do change (services like TOSBack track some of those changes), and while lawsuits are an option courts are not capable of addressing certain classes of problems like one's loss of privacy; when one's privacy is lost it can be impossible to regain. Courts aren't so good with resolutions to non-monetary problems.
Slashdot Mirror
All computer users deserve software freedom. Switching from Adobe Acrobat to Foxit Reader is moving from one proprietor/monopolist to another hoping that the switch makes users more safe. Without software freedom one cannot inspect the program to see what it does (a spy program that has no bugs is still doing spying on users), change the program to make it better, or help one's community by distributing the improved version. Proprietary software is untrustworthy by default. We don't fully know what it does nor should we trust it does only what we want it to do.
I would be interested to know what licensing decisions went into freetype. Freetype is licensed under two licenses: the GNU GPL and a license that allows proprietary derivatives. I would need to know more about this particular situation before I could say more about freetype's licensing beyond the obvious consequences. But this freetype situation is a good opportunity to look at a more general case, which I'll try to elaborate on below.
Generally, this is part of the reason why people license their work under the GNU GPL—a strongly copylefted free software license—alone. Those who license under the GPL generally don't mind people developing commercial software based on GPL'd work, the free software movement is not at all anti-commercial software. The objection is against building proprietary derivative works: software that doesn't share their work with the community on terms that respect users' software freedom, just like the code that shared with the derivative work developers. The GPL says to share and share alike and this helps create and maintain a commons in which we can all share while still respecting our private right to run, share, and modify.
We can increase the odds that proprietors have to decide between writing their own code and building on a strongly-copylefted code that would have made derivatives free software as well. Just to forestall an anticipated oft-repeated objection: "Force" is not the issue here as there is no forcing developers to develop based on strongly-copylefted free software in the first place. Developers can always write their own code.
As it is, non-copylefted free software licenses typically turn developers into charitable contributors for proprietors. We've known about this issue for a long time but appeals to popularity ("think of all the users you'll have!") instead of improving the free software commons sometimes win out. The FSF has sage advice on this ground:
Apparently any improvements proprietors make to freetype code are only shared with the free software community if the proprietor so chooses. Assuming they share any changes at all, those changes may be shared under terms that make them unusable to free software projects: perhaps their changes will implement code that is covered by patents making those changes useless even if the changes are licensed to share, or the changed code may be licensed in other ways that is useless to FLOSS (such as binary-only implementations under a proprietary license). In this instance, Microsoft has no obligation to share under terms useful to FLOSS as a fair exchange for distributing work based on freetype code that was so generously shared with Microsoft.
The answer is simple: the API terms are there to build at least two monopolies out of what could clearly become multiple commonses: no competing app store and no competing developers for apps (whether Apple holds the copyright or not). Apple has a long track record of denying users software freedom. The terms of their app store agreement is hardly surprising.
The more interesting question is why do application developers put up with this. The real power is in the application developer's hands; developers are submitting to the horrible iPhone Developer Program License Agreement. Why? I'm guessing the reason is similar to the lottery logic that persuades millions to buy into a scheme where the vast majority lose to prop up very few winners. Convincing people "you gotta play to win" instead of the more accurate "you're most likely gonna lose". In other words, it's a question of values: developers are taught to value popularity over all things, including their own software freedom and the software freedom of their users. Remember that if an application copyright holder chooses to agree to the aforementioned license and Apple denies them a place in their app store, the copyright holder has agreed not to distribute in competing app stores. This is one power one would normally have under copyright law and it is signed away in an attempt to prop up Apple's app store.
Who teaches them these values? Some open source movement proponents, to be sure; that movement was designed to never bring up ethics and that movement shuns talking about computer user's freedoms to run (recall that Apple can "kill" a deployed iPhone app on any non-jailbroken iPhone), share, and modify. Proprietors, including Apple, like it that way. This arrangement helps Apple more easily address an audience of talented software developers that might look at a digital phone as another general-purpose computing device which ought to properly be the property of its owner. As the EFF points out:
This is another reason why people need software freedom for the firmware in their computers. Apparently we need to be able to inspect, share, and modify this software. Coreboot is a great project along these lines.
I sure could use a donut.
The Timesonline server took too long to respond for me (now it works) and I missed the quote at the end of that article where the unnamed Univ. spokesman said that "UCL has no jurisdiction over the site, as it is not UCL-hosted.". Now I see that that aspect of the issue isn't the center of this debate. It's good that Martell hosted his site elsewhere.
That would mean students are old enough to know that they should buy an account at an ISP for their site. This means the students can enjoy freedom from University policy/control, own the domain name and site code, and keep the site up after the student is no longer affiliated with the University. In the US one can get this level of service for under $10/month; it's hard for some university organizations to economically justify competing with that low price.
I don't know UCL's complete logic here, and I don't represent them. But in the US many public universities are facing hard financial times right now. Given fiscal realities tough choices have to be made about how to prioritize dwindling resources including staff time. It's not reasonable to expect that some for-fun project is going to get the attention and resources of staff and faculty work (which is rapidly being homogenized into whatever services can be delivered campus-wide, not custom setups for a particular person/group).
Corporate policy that apparently Apple has some say over. Any chance Apple's reach extends to permanently improving all of their supplier's working conditions? Since we're talking about Apple, I'd like to see Apple do more across the board so this doesn't become some temporary improvement aimed at patching relationships among those that don't look too closely at how computers are made; an improvement that fuels speculation like what we see in the /. headline: "damage control". Those worker's deaths cannot be "cheapened". If you truly think Apple's acts are good and noble, then what's truly disrespectful here is how it had to go this far to get any of Foxconn's contractors to act. Society needs to look at these things more systemically and examine who benefits, who's in charge here, and whether that's right and proper for a prosperous citizenry, not get lost in petty distractions over righteous indigence.
I hope yours was a simple misread rather than a tactic to gain sympathy points for appearing more compassionate. I said that one can hold multiple views of Apple at the same time, distinguishing the good and the bad that corporation does while seeing that corporations activities in context. As much as I regret the Foxconn worker's deaths, I fear that same system which led to their deaths is still in place, leaving the power relationship as corporations would like it to be.
I think your summary is simplistic. Apple's move here is nice but it does nothing to give their users freedoms they deserve (like controlling their own computers so they're not victims of Apple's "kill switch" where Apple can remotely deny any user some program on Apple's whim). This move does nothing to provide developers with reasonable terms for distributing programs on their app store (EFF has highlighted the awful terms). And Apple can decide to discontinue this at any moment, returning the workers to their former state of more unfair pay.
Ultimately decent pay for work should not be subject to corporate largesse. A living wage should be guaranteed by all governments so businesses can't take advantage of workers and maintain an environment that apparently leads to suicides. It's the system in which Apple has the power to do this that deserves challenge; that system must be changed so people can make gadgets and enjoy a living wage at the same time. A profit-before-everything race to the bottom won't do that.
I'd rather not look at this in terms of what one proprietor does today but across what is possible and what is fair. I think it's unwise to rely on corporate largesse for getting back published improvements to programs I wrote. I shared my published improvements with them, they can share their published improvements with me and do so in a form I have a chance of being able to incorporate into my variant of the program. That sounds fair to me. Leaving it up to proprietors to share and share alike with me is treating a business like a charity which I will not do. I want to be equals with anyone who distributes the program.
None of those issues you raise in any way rebut what I said. It's a long series of non-sequiturs none of which address software freedom.
The Opera software company is a publicly traded company, but being for free software does not mean one is anti-business (quite the contrary, actually).
Compliance with standards is nice but software freedom is more important as free software can be inspected and improved by lots of people whereas proprietary software can only be inspected and improved by the proprietor. Features, size, execution speed are all conveniences none of which measure up to the social importance of software freedom. I can, after all, have the quickest, smallest, least buggy spyware around whose license doesn't let anyone but the proprietor remove the spying features and share the improved program with others. That's simply not a good tradeoff. It's socially wise to foster software freedom even if it means putting work into improving a larger, slower, and more buggy program because software freedom means social solidarity with programs that can become better. If one can't program (like most computer users don't), one could get someone else to do that job, contribute money or time on a less technical but still needed task (translations, art, documentation, support). There's business opportunities in improving free software.
Finally, your last point is simultaneously irrelevant, an appeal to popularity (which itself is yet another misprioritization of goals), and conjecture.
Quite right, the FSF has a history of contacting people first and silently arranging compliance.
Actually the Free Software Foundation's goals have nothing to do with "OSS" (open source software) and should not be confused with that movement's goals. The FSF predates the open source movement, the Open Source Initiative, and the FSF is appropriately critical of the open source movement's goals. People from the FSF (most notably Richard Stallman) are the principal authors of the GPLs, and Stallman makes a sharp distinction between the free software movement (which he founded) and the open source movement. You can find clear descriptions of that difference and practical consequences of that difference in almost any of his talks online or the essay I linked to.
Opera is also proprietary; users give up their software freedom, something all computer users deserve. As a practical matter you apparently can't get the better addon system or the rich addon library Firefox enjoys without also having software freedom. I'll take the free software and the verifiable level of trust I enjoy with Firefox knowing lots of skilled hackers work on that program in a way where hackers can vet each other's work (including me, should I so decide to engage in that way).
At the same time, on more important life and death issues (such as war and threats of war, health care, trillions for corporations while citizens go hungry, civil liberties) this administration shares a lot in common with the previous administration, an administration that even former supporters grew to dislike. In my congressional district people know that trillions on occupation hurts us at home in many ways. Drupal code contributions can't measure up to the impact of keeping that much money in our country solving domestic issues. President Obama won't get me to change my mind with something as trivial as this.
Actually free software stands in contradiction to "Every manufacturer has the monopoly on his own products." because free software means users have the freedom (permission) to develop competing products based on the free software they run. Hardware manufacturers are beginning to appear which allow one to develop competing products in much the same way. Apple's restrictions in their iPhone API license agreement are unusually hostile to distributing applications Apple does not approve of (see section 7.3 which says rejected iPhone applications can't be distributed anywhere else). The thing to note about Fiore's second bite at the Apple (so to speak) is that Fiore has an audience large enough to complain. Others who would use their freedom of speech (permission) by "ridiculing public figures" won't get a second chance because nobody will chat up their misfortune at choosing to deal with such an arbitrary power.
One wonders if Apple would go after him for doing such a thing. As the EFF shows, you're never on sure ground with Apple because Apple accepts/rejects app submissions seemingly arbitrarily. And they are working off of a history of legally threatening people on baseless claims and profound misreads of policy. I don't think it a stretch to wonder if Apple would consider a different version of the application they refused to distribute to be a violation of section 7.3 of their most recent revision of the Apple iPhone Developer Program License Agreement which aims to stop developers from distributing rejected iPhone applications via other means. Granted, a different program would no doubt use different API and possibly offer users entirely different features, a different look and feel, and it could even be distributed under a FLOSS license (or "FOSS" as Apple prefers to call it—can't have people thinking about "libre" as that might lead to people inquire what software freedom means!), but from Apple's perspective: there's a monopoly to sustain here.
Here's hoping you expected no different from any proprietor. That is what makes this brouhaha so funny: a supporter of one proprietor complaining about the adverse impact of another proprietor's power to avoid commodification. Imagine that: the software freedoms users deserve and ought to have for all published software so we can strengthen social solidarity are also useful for developers!
All proprietors are the same at this level: User's software freedoms aren't on the menu no matter which proprietor you choose. That's why choosing proprietary software is merely selecting a new master.
Of course the GAO is a government office, so if I'm not supposed to trust the government...
I'd rather not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I can think of plenty of places where the government is trustworthy: I trust them to bend over for corporate power in a heartbeat. Corporations no doubt benefit from a sham stamp of approval like "Energy Star" to help sell products. Private organizations do plenty of harm (Dow Chemical and Bhopal, war profiteering, financing campaigns that weaken consumer protections, the movie "The Corporation" is filled with more examples) and that harm is (by design) beyond any democratic relief or judicial oversight; we don't need more of that. On issues of life and death, war and peace, it's clear that the US government is plenty willing to keep wars, banks, and now HMOs financed with taxpayer dollars while its citizens suffer; plenty of examples of government-corporate working against the people. People need to fix this not think government is something to throw away. The power of government can be turned to benefit its people.
Mozilla's decision is no more "political" than the proprietors decision to go with other codecs that cannot be freely redistributed everywhere. The effect of those politics on user's freedom is what is important and how these situations differ.
But that doesn't address whether another organization should have access to this data in the first place which is the heart of this issue. Hosting conveniences aside, the best counterargument to using any other hosted service will be close examination of the consequences of one's chosen hoster(s) (and whomever the hoster(s) deems worthy) having access to one's data. Eben Moglen's Talk on "Freedom in the Cloud" seems remarkably apropos here.
And that's relevant how? Most users haven't been taught about software freedom; one cannot expect them to consider concepts they've never learned about despite how it affects their ability to participate in a community of equals limited only by what they want to put into it. Teaching people about software freedom is work the free software movement needs to do. But one's freedom shouldn't depend on what most users know.
The linux-libre project removes binary blobs from its variant of the Linux kernel. I'm not convinced that most users' variants of the Linux kernel are entirely free software.
Since I don't oppose commercial free software, I tend to agree. All free software is commercial since any of it may be distributed for a fee (otherwise it would not qualify as free software) and any of it may be used by a business to pursue their ends. I figure that to be anti-commercial software is to be anti-free software. The free software movement is not anti-business. We're pro-software freedom—people should be free to run, inspect, share, and modify all published computer software. So, as Jeremy Allison said in TFA, "Keep our eyes on the prize -- we keep doing this [free software development] and we will end up with a world where, yes, there may be more proprietary gardens but we can ignore them by creating our own content, creating our own software and creating our own hardware. Let's build the world that we want to see.". Indeed, that's what's gotten us this far and that's how we should keep going.
We need to teach people about the software freedom too: share the values of our community of cooperative collaboration, including teaching them that paying for free software is a good thing; it helps make more free software!
I would not recommend obfuscating the difference between software we're free to inspect, share, and modify versus software we're disallowed from inspecting, sharing, and modifying. The known and knowable is simply not the same as the unknowable. You risk coming off as an apologist for proprietary software, no matter the proprietor. As for services and their adherence to stated policy: policies can and do change (services like TOSBack track some of those changes), and while lawsuits are an option courts are not capable of addressing certain classes of problems like one's loss of privacy; when one's privacy is lost it can be impossible to regain. Courts aren't so good with resolutions to non-monetary problems.