Column: Apple’s Draconian Closed Environment
Despite being an open-source stalwart, I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve always had something of a love-hate relationship with Apple. In the ’80s, I owned – and still do own – an original Apple IIe along with a real hard drive and two 5.25in floppy drives. It was inherited from the video shop that I worked in, and I put it and its immense customer database to all kinds of nefarious uses. But eventually I moved on to the upland pastures of colour displays, 880kB of storage on a 3.5in disk and four-channel sound. All thanks to Commodore.
In the ’90s, Apple’s expensive and closed hardware meant that an upgrade was never on the cards. This was now the world of Windows, of cheap hardware and modular upgrades. It was the time when Microsoft solidified its dominance, and the time that many of us were looking for a more open alternative. Developing applications on Windows was expensive, especially if you wanted to share the source code. That left us with only one option: Linux. And I’ve never looked back.
But I’ve continued to follow, and occasionally invest in, the progress of Apple, especially in recent years. The move to Intel and a BSD-based operating system has made OS X eminently more hackable, and Linux- based open-source applications are far easier to build and port to OS X than they are to Windows. This has helped make the venerable MacBook Pro one of the most common laptops in use at open-source and Linux conventions, despite Apple’s obsessive control of the hardware. Apple, for many, has become an acceptable compromise for those who believe in free software but still want a machine that can resume from hibernation without the need to build a custom kernel.
But it’s the iPhone, and now the iPad, that has built a brick wall of division between what most of us are willing to ignore, and what Apple hopes will become their ultimate cash cow. Both are the result of a singular, draconian vision, the antithesis of what the open-source community represents. This isn’t a bad thing in itself, especially when the results leave a lot of free software products wanting. The interfaces of iPhone apps tend to be refined, simple and intuitive. The apps are consistent, responsive and cheap. Our parents could use an iPad without fear of viruses, malware and updates. For almost all the same reasons I’ve been telling them to switch to Linux, they can now switch to Apple for about the same cost.
But doing so is a pact with the devil, because you’re forgoing technical complexity in exchange for loss of freedom. This is the reason for Richard Stallman’s GNU manifesto. And while there’s little doubt that Apple’s enforced gateway to new applications has helped to make it a success, it’s this subtle trade of simplicity for complicity that is perhaps the biggest threat to free software in 10 years.
My fears were proven when Apple recently changed clauses 3.3.1 and 3.3.2 in its developer’s agreement, stopping programmers linking to third-party APIs. Its motivation may have been to halt apps using Adobe’s new Flash-based building tools, but it could also stop applications using open source-based frameworks such as MonoTouch and SDL. Apple refuses to clarify what will and will not be allowed through its vetting procedure. Presumably Electronic Arts games will still be allowed to use the LUA scripting engine, for example, while many independent developers aren’t going to know whether their approach is acceptable until they submit their app for review.
This type of business plan shows the very worst of what closed-source development has to offer, and exactly what open-source software blossomed to combat. But we can’t fight it with rhetoric and positive spin while our hardware and applications aren’t as good as those from closed systems. Public development and public scrutiny should lead to a better, more usable and more stable product. It worked for Linux servers and desktops, but it hasn’t worked for mobile devices yet. This is the challenge for free software developers.
It’s going to be tough, but this point in time probably marks the biggest opportunity for free software to prove its worth. It’s going to be a simple battle between closed, proprietary development on a single platform, and open innovation on open hardware. Open-source developers need to rise to the challenge or face a future that will be closed to collaboration, community and conscience.
