"Apple seem to me to be the worst and most aggressive for exaggerating the significance and originality of their own proprietary code relative to the amount of copyleft code they depend on to run their software stack."
I'm finding this hard to parse. Mix & match is okay, so long as you don't promote what you feel makes you special? I don't get it, this seems to be an emotional reaction to the fact Apple is still doing so well vs. more open source (Android) approaches.
Herein lies the crux of the competitive manner. In what possible way is Apple's success with their proprietary code and processes exaggerated? I mean, Apple might market in a way you find distasteful, but facts are facts - Apple has been wildly successful in profitability, largely because of their proprietary ability to design great holistic user experiences that people like to use. This isn't because of marketing and brainwashing solely, as the products do mostly work really well, with some debate around overall quality lately.
The Google/Android ecosystem has access to the same open source base Apple does, and they've wound up in a different competitive situation - high marketshare, no direct profits on Android itself. Everything is driven by compliments, like Ads. Perhaps that's part the point of open source - to drive out direct profits on a core set of capabilities. But why hasn't it worked on Apple?
I think the issue is not solely about code, it's about ecosystem and all the proprietary bits surrounding that (The Apple Store, the app store, their hardware devices, the Genius Bar experience...). Apple has managed to build a very appealing proprietary ecosystem to both users because of the experience, and developers because of the overall architecture of the app store and potential for $$$.
All of this is not about exaggeration and "it's magic" stuff, it's about very smart people thinking through how they're going to compete against an ecosystem that doesn't want to make any money.
> In what possible way is Apple's success with their proprietary code and processes exaggerated? [...] facts are facts - Apple has been wildly successful in profitability, largely because of their proprietary ability to design great holistic user experiences that people like to use.
You won't find anything in the comment you're responding to that says anything contrary to what you've written here. You're reframing the argument into something that it is not. No one is talking about whether or not Apple is successful.
The OP suggested that Apple is mainly successful because it is exaggerating the value of its proprietary efforts in its marketing vs. the success it has had co-opting the work of open source software.
I'm saying that most of their success has come from their proprietary efforts, particularly around their ecosystem, and that it is an interesting reflection of where open source has succeeded and failed in the broader market.
> The OP suggested that Apple is mainly successful because it is exaggerating the value of its proprietary efforts in its marketing vs. the success it has had co-opting the work of open source software.
That wasn't what I was saying. While I'm sure that their PR contributed to their success (as all successful adverts help sell products), if Apple's products weren't also done to a high quality then their adverts wouldn't have made a difference. So I will always credit Apple for releasing well polished products. But in any case, I wasn't commenting about the success of Apple nor their products.
My complaint is that the incremental improvements that Apple bring to the industry - regardless of how sleek they may be - isn't itself innovation. And I'm saying that their proprietary efforts are actually a relatively minor part of their wider software stack. But obviously being the front end, it's what people recognise as being "Apple" so all of the fundamental open source components that power iPhones and Macbook Pros get forgotten about.
I guess if were to argue that I was having an emotional response to anything, it would be that the true innovators of the technology we use get forgotten about. eg the creators of the programming language C - for without which there wouldn't be Objective C or Java. Or the creators of UNIX, for without which we wouldn't have Mach or Linux. In many ways, Dennis Ritchie contributed more to the technology that powers our smartphones than Apple and Google have, yet his death was a footnote only noticed by us geeks.
> My complaint is that the incremental improvements that Apple bring to the industry - regardless of how sleek they may be - isn't itself innovation.
That's really debatable. Innovation is about bringing something new and uniquely useful to the market [1]. It is an economic term, arguably coined by economists to distinguish from invention, which often has zero economic impact. Innovations can be incremental. They might not even be technology - a small change in process or in positioning can be an innovation. Incremental things add up to a big deal. My favorite list of sources of innovative opportunity is Drucker's [2]
I agree the true inventors often get forgotten about, and that's lamentable. And I'm sorry for reading into your comment too much about success.
> The OP suggested that Apple is mainly successful because it is exaggerating the value of its proprietary efforts in its marketing vs. the success it has had co-opting the work of open source software.
No, he or she did not. I repeat myself: there is not a mention of Apple's success in the comment you're responding to, much less that this tactic is the principal reason for it. The argument is only that this tactic is something that Apple does plenty of. Every mention of Apple's success, starting with the comment of yours that I replied to, is a derailment.
You're either totally disingenuous here (by intentionally arguing against a point that was never made) or totally confused (by arguing by mistake against a point that was never made).
> this seems to be an emotional reaction to the fact Apple is still doing so well vs. more open source (Android) approaches.
Wow that's a hell of a conclusion to jump to. And your argument doesn't even make sense given how hugely successful Android has been.
I was actually thinking more on the wider industry scale, such as Redhat, Canonical, and obviously Google (but not specifically Android).
> In what possible way is Apple's success with their proprietary code and processes exaggerated? I mean, Apple might market in a way you find distasteful, but facts are facts - Apple has been wildly successful in profitability, largely because of their proprietary ability to design great holistic user experiences that people like to use. This isn't because of marketing and brainwashing solely, as the products do mostly work really well, with some debate around overall quality lately.
Clean design isn't innovation. I'm not disputing that Apple have done great work on polishing their products and rightfully deserve to be rewarded for it. I have an issue with companies that stand on the shoulders of giants and then claim their software stacks are "innovative", "original" and deserve aggressively pursuing any company who developed similarly usable frontends around the same or similar underlying open source software stacks.
> All of this is not about exaggeration and "it's magic" stuff, it's about very smart people thinking through how they're going to compete against an ecosystem that doesn't want to make any money.
All of that you listed existed before Apple incorporated them, it wasn't their invention. And your "[the mobile ecosystem] doesn't want to make any money" couldn't be more wrong. Mobile apps were a profitable market before the iPhone came along, not to mention the profitability selling feature phones and smart phones at that time. It was already a pretty big industry - though obviously had room to grow.
Apple obviously did a great job carving a share of that market. But it would be silly to say they were the only ones wanting to make money.
innovation is generally considered to be a process that brings together various novel ideas in a way that they have an impact on society. (https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Innovation)
This pretty much sums up Apple's M.O., which has often been described as taking something that has already been invented (often by someone else), and putting it together in a new way that makes it useful (and usable) to mass market consumers.
Consider Time Machine. Apple didn't invent backup systems, but designing one in such a way that non-technical people could use it, was truly innovative, and Apple deserves a lot of credit for this. Likewise Apple didn't invent the tablet computer, but they came up with the key innovations that made it an attractive product.
So, maybe you didn't mean innovation, but invention, and maybe you don't think Apple deserves much credit, because you think invention is much harder than innovation and design? But if that truly were the case, then why do so few companies do what Apple does?
> So, maybe you didn't mean innovation, but invention, and maybe you don't think Apple deserves much credit, because you think invention is much harder than innovation and design? But if that truly were the case, then why do so few companies do what Apple does?
Even fewer companies do invention, so I don't think your closing argument quite proves the point it's trying to. But I do take accept your argument none-the-less.
Innovate generally means to incorporate something new, but it's true that you don't necessarily need to invent to innovate. However Apple are aggressive in litigating against anyone who they feel borrows their ideas via intellectual property laws - which would suggest they at least consider themselves to be inventors, even if you don't include that in the definition of "innovation".
ALL companies are aggressive in litigating against anyone who they feel borrows their ideas via intellectual property laws. It's basically REQUIRED (by those same intellectual property laws) to maintain your 'intellectual property'.
Now, one could argue that there shouldn't be such laws or that they should be shaped differently, but that's a different discussion, in some ways.
It's only required for trademarks. Copyrights and patents don't require defending every case to maintain ownership.
Perversely it might actually be a good thing if you did have to for patents as it would force trolls into the open early on (ie before their claims run into the millions).
This is only partially true. You are 'strongly encouraged' to enforce your patent violations, for after a period of years (6) they basically become unenforceable. This is to prevent things like 'patent bombs'.
In practice it doesn't always work this way ( see patent trolls ) but it can be a BIG issue for people looking to enforce their patents.
No, that ALSO applies to patents, though the term is actually 6 years rather than the standard 3. Your 'confused' comment is a good example of why the FSF should encourage educating ones-self instead of trying to play semantic games with the english language.
But that only limits the time period for which damages may be claimed - it does not forfeit the ability to claim damages altogether, which is what may happen with trademarks; that's a pretty significant difference.
Ok, that is an interesting aspect of US patent law I wasn't familiar with. But this doesn't look like a universal property of patents, more likely it's specific to the US?
> I'm finding this hard to parse. Mix & match is okay, so long as you don't promote what you feel makes you special?
No, it is more like Apple mostly takes and only gives grudgingly, so grudgingly that they are willing to spend millions of dollars on e.g. LLVM so that they won't have to give at all.
They say a good marriage is when both sides feel they are providing 80% of the "give". With Apple, they really are providing only 20% of the "give" and begrudge even that.
That's nonsense. If they don't want to give at all, why did they make clang free? That was entirely an Apple project, and so they could have made it proprietary, yet they made it open.
Or how about Webkit? Yes, they started from KHTML, which was LGPL. They could have easily kept most of their additions in separate parts linked with the LGPL parts, and they could have kept their parts proprietary. Yet they released their parts under a permissive license.
Or how about launchd? That was entirely theirs, and they could have made it proprietary. Yet they released it under an open source license, one that the FSF recognizes as a free software license. Then when Ubunutu was looking for a new startup daemon and considered launchd, but did not like the license, Apple change the license to Apache. That sure doesn't sound like Apple is trying to give anything.
As far as LLVM goes, there is no reason to believe funding it was anything other than an engineering decision. They needed a modular compiler kit so they could use parts of it in things like debuggers and editors and on-the-fly optimization of graphic filters.
LLVM was the only free compiler kit at the time that was production quality and could do these things. GCC could be modified to do these things if you put in a lot of work, but as a matter of policy Stallman would not allow those changes back into the codebase.
So, they had two options: (1) fork GCC and diverge massively from the official version, or (2) use LLVM. Any sane engineer would choose #2.
I'm finding this hard to parse. Mix & match is okay, so long as you don't promote what you feel makes you special? I don't get it, this seems to be an emotional reaction to the fact Apple is still doing so well vs. more open source (Android) approaches.
Herein lies the crux of the competitive manner. In what possible way is Apple's success with their proprietary code and processes exaggerated? I mean, Apple might market in a way you find distasteful, but facts are facts - Apple has been wildly successful in profitability, largely because of their proprietary ability to design great holistic user experiences that people like to use. This isn't because of marketing and brainwashing solely, as the products do mostly work really well, with some debate around overall quality lately.
The Google/Android ecosystem has access to the same open source base Apple does, and they've wound up in a different competitive situation - high marketshare, no direct profits on Android itself. Everything is driven by compliments, like Ads. Perhaps that's part the point of open source - to drive out direct profits on a core set of capabilities. But why hasn't it worked on Apple?
I think the issue is not solely about code, it's about ecosystem and all the proprietary bits surrounding that (The Apple Store, the app store, their hardware devices, the Genius Bar experience...). Apple has managed to build a very appealing proprietary ecosystem to both users because of the experience, and developers because of the overall architecture of the app store and potential for $$$.
All of this is not about exaggeration and "it's magic" stuff, it's about very smart people thinking through how they're going to compete against an ecosystem that doesn't want to make any money.