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App Culture vs. Free Culture

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Paul Keith:
This was answered but I thought some may like to discuss it further and feel neither side gave a satisfactory answer:

The part of the talk where he talks about the day care experiment has strengthened a worry I've been having for a while. The worry that the "app culture" introduced by the iPhone will break the free software culture. Why should anyone work hard for the greater good of humanity when others become millionaires by selling crap to people? (Sorry for putting it so bluntly but what else is a "flashlight app"?) I actually know people who were free software advocates (and still are) but nonetheless now try to make a quick dollar by writing mobile phone apps.-Christian Mertes
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Why should anyone work hard for the greater good of humanity when others become millionaires by selling crap to people?"

Now that the free software culture is here, I doubt it is going anywhere. Which is not to say software should not have associated costs, like service and hardware, but that once people start making things for the love of the practice, its a bit hard to remove that activity from people. This is really part of Clay's argument. It is increasingly easier for people to participate in activities due to their love of the activity, including the production of software. I think the decrease in difficulty, combined with the increase of love(interest) makes for a cocktail that isn't going anywhere, and if anything, gives quite a lot of hope for the future.-Travis Ladner
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Let's hope so but frankly, I'm not so optimistic. Writing apps gives practice, community feeling including positive feedback *and* a few extra bucks (with the potential to be set for life if your thing really takes of). Free software was made possible because it was easy to share. With apps it's easy to share and easy to make money doing so. If there was an app store for lolcats, I don't know what would happen and Clay didn't discuss this recent development.-Christian Mertes
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Comments underneath: http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cognitive_surplus_will_change_the_world.html

mouser:
I want to comment on this.  Windows 8 leaked documents suggest that Microsoft is going to get on the "App Store" bandwagon and have a kind of store where people can easily buy applications online and have them installed automatically, etc.

I don't buy the argument "Why should anyone work hard for the greater good of humanity when others become millionaires by selling crap to people?" -- i don't think that holds weight.  People code for all sorts of reasons, and money is a minor one.

BUT:

I do not know if i am over-reacting or not thinking things through, but I do have a real worry that this "App Store" trend, while extremely convenient, will lead us down a path where we have "preferred" sellers (big companies) which come to dominate these "App Stores" and put freeware coders in a very bad position.

If getting your app into an official "App Store" requires some certification process that costs money and requires bureaucratic hoop jumping, and if money can buy higher placement in these stores, and if these online "stores" become the preferred place for people to get programs, etc.

I worry that App Stores are going to exacerbate the winner-take-all problem we already have on the internet where the top search results reinforce their position and lead to dominance of a category for no other reason than a positive feedback loop.

I worry that freeware coders are going to be even further disadvantaged by the nature of the App Stores, and that the financial success of the Operating System as a whole benefits from such phenomena, rather than being motivated to reduce it.  Just as google benefits from advertisers spending so much money to get higher ranked search results, the App Stores will benefit from an environment where money is involved in App Store downloads.

zridling:
I find the entire app store concept -- from the corporate/control side -- very weird. They make and control the hardware, and now they restrict which software can and cannot be installed. It's as if I bought a car but was only allowed to drive on roads with 4 lanes or more.

Motives For Writing Free Software
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fs-motives.html

Selling Free Software
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

Renegade:
I find the entire app store concept -- from the corporate/control side -- very weird. They make and control the hardware, and now they restrict which software can and cannot be installed. It's as if I bought a car but was only allowed to drive on roads with 4 lanes or more.
-zridling (July 03, 2010, 10:12 PM)
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+100 & 100% agreed~!

I write both free and commercial software. Commercial software puts food on the table. I like that a lot because I get hungry every day~! :P

I also put out free software, both freeware and "use & abuse" software.

But when it comes to being restricted to what kind of software I can download, install, and run on MY hardware (when you sell it to me, it becomes MINE!!!), then I have a very real problem.

I believe the root of the problem is patent, copyright, and intellectual property laws that have gone very far off into some very dangerous territory, compounded with corporate agency (which is duty-bound to be psychotic -- quite literally, that isn't figurative) that pursues profit at any expense. Companies are abusing laws and basically raping their customers on one side, while on the other they pretend to be "good" by doing some inane "community service" to distract people from their basic psychosis.

I suppose that we have this general feeling that markets should be essentially free (with certain exceptions for dangerous goods like chemicals, weapons, etc.), with anybody being able to participate. The iTunes app store flies in the face of that with Apple controlling everything from the developer toolchain to what software gets listed in the store. i.e. You are not free to participate in the iTunes store because you require the approval of Apple, which is completely arbitrary.

This just doesn't sit well with me, and I suspect that this doesn't sit well with most people here.

To put things in a more concrete perspective, if mouser wanted to put some software in the store so that DC people could download it to their iPhones, there's no guarantee there that he would be able to, no matter how he tried and with no relevance to his competence or ability. Apple's decisions are arbitrary and binding. i.e. You would not be allowed by Apple to install software on your iPhone that mouser wrote for you, and you would have no way to install it; it's locked.

How does this benefit you? Short answer: it doesn't.

I believe that being able to run any software I want is a very basic right I have for my own hardware. I don't think that's unreasonable.


Oh... 1 last rant...



All security arguments for restricted hardware/software/closed app stores are fallacies. No security argument can be valid there. i.e. All arguments for security at the expense of basic freedoms are fallacies. (All arguments for security imply increased control/power for some purpose/to some end. -- AND -- No argument that implies increased control/power/restrictions can not affect freedom. -- AND -- All restrictions on freedom are undesirable. [I'm skipping a few steps in logic here.])


I lied... 1 more rant...


We have a basic problem where the vast majority of people are horribly uneducated on the topic of freedom, and massively undereducated when it comes to computing. My uncle told me that he knows how to turn a computer on and off, and that's it. I honestly doubt that he knows how to turn a computer off properly... There are a lot more people out there like that. They make up the marketplace and drive it. It would be remiss to allow the uneducated masses to drive us all off a cliff. I would love to see a "Consumer Electronics Freedom Protection Act".

Ok. No more rants. These kinds of topics really just set me off.

Deozaan:
As far as I know, anybody can submit an app to the Android Market. Is that correct? Why is Google making Chrome OS and not Android OS (for PCs)?

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