So they should be forced to develop the SDK and the dev tools for free and provide that support for free? I mean it would be very nice of them to do so, but legally forcing them to do it? I don't know about that. It is a shortsighted "solution".
The SDK is paid for when purchasing the phone. Same as with Mac OS, OS X, DOS, Windows, Android, Blackberry, ChromeOS and every other OS out there. It's not shortsighted, it's worked well for the past 50 years or so.
and for advanced developer tooling you can charge. This is what MS does. Visual Studio (not Code) is not free for businesses.
One can still do C# development using only Windows SDK and/or dotnet SDK for "free".
You cannot do C/C++ or Rust developement without a license but with MinGW you also can do it without MS SDK. MS doesn't prevent people from using GCC compilers. Their core C++ developers even use it: https://nuwen.net/mingw.html
the point is, MS and others are free to choose how they will offer their services. They can say "hey I'll provide this for free, and I will make you pay for this other thing". As long as they are not a monopoly in computing, they should be free to do whatever they want, no? If they go bonkers with what they ask vs the value they provide, competition will wipe them out - easy peasy.
Apple could have said at the beginning "hey this is iPhone, there are no external apps for it though" - which was actually the case! iPhone did not have 3rd party apps at launch.
Then Apple could have said "good news everyone, you can now develop for the iPhone. Dev kits start at $10000 per unit, apply to partner with us, call us at this number" and that would be the end of it. Lots of gadgets still work like that and nobody bats an eye.
Apple decreased the barrier to entry and provided it as a service, charged for it but created good value in return, and it worked! But now that governments signal that they will punish such success, the next Apple will likely not go the way of low barrier of entry - this will hurt the regular folk, people with not so deep pockets.
What worked well for the past 50 years was freedom. None of those operating systems were forced to provide dev kits at no additional cost. They did it to compete. If Apple's additional costs' value proposition was not there, they would not be successful, they would not be able to attract good developers creating good software. Apple is not a monopoly either, there is competition. So forcing them to provide a service at no additional cost is just theft. And corporations can circumvent the hit they will get from being forced in innumerable ways in a capitalist system, all at the expense of the consumer.
The point is, nobody is disallowed from competing with Apple and its ecosystem on its merits. If Apple didn't provide enough value in return to what they ask, they would fail. Signaling that you will punish success with force means that the next Apple will be a lot more cautious about how they do things. Jacked up prices (as long as value proposition is there, people will pay, they will just pay more), requiring dev kits (can you force a company to change their hardware design so that it can be developed on? where is the limit?) / expensive partnership agreements / increasing the barrier to entry... Unless companies are "state owned" they have infinite ways to keep their profits at the expense of consumers. Apple's existing deal was a good deal - it was working, competition was (and is still) there. Now they will have to do the things that will just inconvenience users as a side effect, which is what they don't want to do, but they will be forced to do regardless.
I believe they would be allowed to charge for the SDK and the dev tools as long as they don’t require developers to use that SDK and the dev tools. I’m sure someone else would provide an alternative SDK and tooling then.
But is it even legally required for them to provide a stable 3rd party software support? That would be ridiculous. So if they put in the effort to provide such a base and open it to public, why can't they choose to be compensated for that work?
My problem can be summarized as (assume the company in question is not a monopoly):
* Is it illegal to sell a device with a microprocessor in it that has no support for 3rd party programmability? -> no, most digital devices are like this in fact.
* Is it illegal to sell a computing device and develop software in house for it? Maybe charge for some of it? Still with no 3rd party support? -> no it is not illegal.
* Is it illegal then, to contract other developers / companies to write that "in house" software for the device you are making? -> no that is not illegal
* Is it illegal to make agreements with other companies to buy software / programming services from them to include in your device? -> no that is not illegal
* Is it illegal to make agreements with other companies so that they can sell licenses to "unlock" their software in your device and get a cut from their sales? -> no it is not illegal
* Is it illegal to sell dev kits to the the above? So the device in question is still not a device you can develop on - but you can create another device where 3rd parties can develop on, and you can sell it to them. You can also pick and choose which companies you will work with. None of this is illegal.
* Is it illegal to automate all of the above? Provide low barrier to entry, no bureaucracy, if you want to develop for the device just do, pay us $100 a year, and give us a cut and you are golden! No need to get into direct contact with us, wait months to get our manual approval - we streamline everything and even the little guy can participate? -> HN thinks that this suddenly must be illegal. If they are providing all this service, they should be legally forced to do all for free.
They can choose to be compensated for their work, but in case of the 30% cut, they seem to want to be compensated for someone else’s work, because how much a successful app makes vs. an unsuccessful app is not a function of the SDK or the platform, which is the same for both. I would have no problem if they asked for a flat fee for providing their service. But they want to profit off the revenue of a whole ecosystem, and that has no quantitative relation to the effort of maintaining the OS and the SDK.
That’s just my personal opinion. The DMA is about anti-trust, that some companies are controlling a too large part of the cake, affecting too many users (end users as well as “business users”, e.g. app developers), which is bad for a competitive market and level playing field.
All of these are wrong. The answer to each of those is "It may or may not be legal depending on various factors including whether it is intentionally creating a monopolistic anti-competitive environment".
Laws are allowed to have very nuanced opinions where it's illegal for microsoft to disallow uninstalling Internet Explorer program (USA vs MS, 2001), but perfectly legal for microsoft do disallow installing the File Explorer program.
I know us programmers want laws to perfectly specified in unambiguous mathematics, but lawyers want laws to be specified in English with nuance and room for interpretation and judgement of intent and spirit.
It makes no sense to you because you are thinking like a programmer. Laws are for empathetic decent humans, not soulless hacker-news-posting programmers.
