The point of this is to try to keep your customers happy, and to listen to their concerns.  If a customer is not happy with something about your service or product no decent business would just tell them to ‘piss off’, instead they would try their best to address the customers concern and to try to prevent such occurances in the future.  For example if you sold a spade which the handle kept coming off you’d either replace the item or refund the customers money and, but more importantly, you’d try to identify the cause of the problem.

While often customer complaints are a one-off and usually end there, what is important is to keep a lookout for repeated complaints as they indicate a systemic problem.  For example in a restaurant if a certain dish gets sent back regularly you wouldn’t say that the customers have no taste, instead you’d look into what is in it and how it is made in an attempt to solve the issue entirely.

Customers vs FOSS

Take this blog from Preston Gralla for example.  He says that installing software that is not in the repo’s is too difficult and is holding back Linux adoption.  Not a new statement in the slightest, and one that I both agree with and am sure I have even said before.

It’s not even like he’s being an angry shouter like a lot of us embittered haters have become, he’s clearly following the ‘make every second paragraph praise’ approach which is required (as an offering to the Holy GNU) when writing any article that dares be critical of Linux.  Not that it helped him at all anyway.

He is a ‘customer’ of Ubuntu, just as I am and just as thousands of other people who no doubt share the same view are.  And while many people are about to say something pithy like “Linx doesn’t want you”, may I remind you of Ubuntu Bug #1 – Microsoft has majority marketshare – implying that Ubuntu actually wants customers.

Yet this guy says something that, to him, is an impediment to him using Ubuntu and immediately gets his head bitten off by a horde of angry Linux users who then post massive amounts of comments saying how he is wrong, calling him a shill, claiming he’s getting paid by MS, claiming that the site is fundamentally biased (despite it being home to the infamous SJVN) and generally denying that the problem he outlines could possibly exist, and it’s only because he’s either stupid, or being paid that he can come to such a conclusion.

The following two questions then get raised: Will this torrent of abuse somehow make him change his mind about his claim and realise that the problem he has suddenly isn’t a problem anymore?  And more importantly will he be more disposed to trying and promoting Linux after recieving those responses than before?

Or consider if you went into a bar and ordered a drink, and the drink tasted like cleaning fluid (or otherwise nasty) and you pointed this out to the bartender.  If he (and the other patrons) proceeded to call you an idiot moron you would simply not ever go back and tell all your friends about the bad experience (welcome to my blog!) rather than go ‘you’re right I am a moron’.

The customers complaints are always valid.  Calling them a moron and denying they have a complaint does solve the problem – you no longer have them as a customer.

Installing Software In Linux Sucks

Besides, he’s right.  It’s amusing that the community that touts ‘choice’ as it’s primary selling point presents the argument that he should just wait until the distro updates the repository, rather than be able to easily use new software straight off the bat.

When I was trying Linux I had endless issues with the software in the repo’s being massively out of date, and what do you expect?  You have tens of thousands of apps to track and keep up to date and it’s not even like the iPhone or Android app stores in that developers don’t necessarily submit new versions requiring the repo maintainers to find out when there has been an update (good luck with that).

In an ideal world the repo’s would be all you need (and communism would actually work) but in reality the system of repositorys needs to be supplemented by a system of manual installation in the cases where the software is out of date or simply unavailable.  And the brutal truth is Linux falls flat on it’s face here.

Manual Installation

Welcome to the quagmire that is manual software installation in Linux.  As soon as you’re outside the walled garden of vendor approved obsolete versions of software to be found in the repositories then you’re largely out of luck.

How often have you seen Microsoft being berated for making it’s own ‘standards’ for things like word documents and protocols?  How many Linux evangelists have you seem complain that .docx and .doc are not compatible?  Yet these very same evangelists will argue ’till they are blue in the face that somehow multiple incompatible package formats and standard breaking distros is somehow a ‘good thing’ – usually under the guise of ‘choice’.

Hell, I’ve even written a post bashing the Windows software installation method and since this is technically an anti-Linux (and thus visited largely by Windows users) blog I should be getting angry posts saying how I am wrong, and an idiot, yet all I got was agreements and clarifications!  Yet if you say something as BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS as Linux needs a standardized package format you’ll get flamed to a crisp.

The Dead Parrot Horse

I am flogging a dead horse with my point but I think it deserves to be made (and flogged).  Being critical of Linux always reminds me of the Dead Parrot Sketch.  The community is largely unable to accept any** criticism as valid, no matter how obvious or problematic, with the first approach to user complaints to be to deny they exist, then to call the complainer an idiot troll.

This is what is holding Linux back from going mainstream – it’s the fact that the community simply doesn’t care about the needs or issues of the people they are trying to foist Linux upon.

The claims of ‘community development’ are a massive lie in that aside from posting the occasional bug reports (which you can do with closed source) anyone with a problem is abused and faces North Korean levels of censorship***.  You either take what the Linux cult gives you and be quiet, or you simply don’t use it.  Trying to contribute improvements and suggestions just gets you into trouble.

If you’re happy with Linux, sure use it.  If you’re not don’t even bother – it’s simply not worth it.

* Not if I am working there they aren’t

** I think one of the sources of my Ubuntuforums ban was due to an argument where I was trying to propose double clickable .deb files.

*** Preston, try to have the discussion on your blog post on a Linux forum (Ubuntuforums is a good choice) and see how fast the admins delete your post then ban you.

Of course there is absolutely nothing wrong with distributing something under the GPL.  If you are committed to freedom then you’ll accept that people should have the freedom to use whatever license they please.  What is problematic is the popular view that somehow releasing your software under the GPL is somehow ‘ethical’, with some people even suggesting it should be a legal requirement for all software.

If you believe the revisionists they would tell you that ‘free’ is the natural state of software until companies (mainly Microsoft) came in and ruined everything by ‘closing’ the software and charging money, snatching software utopia out of the worlds hands in the process.

But the problem is this: Why is software the only thing covered by these fundamental freedoms?

Books, Software, Movies and Music are all technically the same thing, they are an infinitely reproducible product based upon human endeavour, differing from standard creations (such as making a chair) in that making 1,000,000 is almost as easy as making 10.  Only the first one took the time to make.

The ‘rights’ outlined in the GPL are not just the right to the source code – that is tangential to the issue.  The main ‘rights’ are for free modification and redistribution – If I receive any GPL’d software I am free to edit it and give it away for no cost.  The claims that ‘you can sell GPL’d software’ as a counter to a claim that it creates an unworkable business model are intellectually dishonest since you can only sell it once – after that you’ll be competing with free.

If I were to buy a new book by Iain Banks, should I have the right to edit, make copies and then give those copies away?  Should I demand the original document rather than the printed version as by not being able to do the above easily with a physical book my ‘freedoms’ are being compromised?  If I was to make this argument to most people who support the GPL as a vehicle for software progress I would be laughed at, but it is fundamentally the same thing.

The argument could be made that books are for entertainment, but education largely comes in book form.  Also there are no clear cut lines between media anymore.  If I draw a sapceship on paper, do you have the ‘freedom’ to take it and give it away?  What about if I make a 3D rendering of it?  What if I make the 3D rendering display as a runtime exe?  What if I make it interactive and flyable?  At what point do your ‘fundamental rights’ kick in and allow you to do whatever you want with it?

The belief is that if the GPL was enforced today then the world would be better off, and while true this fails to consider the future.  If these ‘freedoms’ applied to the world of literature then there would be a wealth of works suddenly made available for low or zero cost.  What would then happen though is the individuals who before were creating a livelihood on the sales of their creation would suddenly have no income and be forced to find other avenues for money and while some may be able to monetize their fame most others would not.  As a result you would get people like Stephen King working as shelf stackers in supermarkets rather than doing what they do well and sure, he can write in the evenings and weekends but he would only write a fraction of what he could under the previous system.

The ‘freedom’ model essentially pulls the rug out from under the system of rewarding artists that has worked for hundreds of years.  People claim that you can ‘sell support’ and that it is just as profitable, but that is blatantly not true in many cases – only certain software can be made profitable.

I want a system where individuals with talent are able to do nothing but exercise that talent, rather than a system where they have to work mundane jobs to simply make a living and are only allowed to create greatness in the evenings and weekends.

So Monty is complaining that Oracle may end up owning MySQL.  Here’s a reality check: If you sell something for ONE BILLION DOLLARS you have no right to dictate the terms of that product anymore.  You sold it, game over.

Sun’s aquisition of MySQL probably helped sink that ship, unlike the flotilla of private yachts that Monty now owns thanks to Sun’s money.  That ONE BILLION DOLLARS he took in exchange for MySQL must be converted into business value somehow to justify it’s price and Oracle are probably going to do just that.

If he really cared about ‘freedom’ he wouldn’t have taken the big businesses money and sold out.  If he really, really cared he’d take that ONE BILLION DOLLARS and simply buy MySQL back as I am pretty sure it’s not worth now what he got for it.

But no, he sets up a site to try to strongarm Oracle into essentially losing all benifits to an investment valued at ONE BILLION DOLLARS because he doesn’t think they can be trusted to keep it ‘free’.

What an idiot.

Anyway that’s not really the point.  I used to be a nearly full-blown freetard a long time ago.  I had the whole ‘hate the man’ thing down (Microsoft) and bought into the whole ‘by developers, for developers, lets cut out the corporate middle man’ movement.  This was before I had even really used Linux – but the concept seemed sound.  And how can a developer not fall for that idea – software utopia, plus never having to deal with anti-user crap like artificial limits and activation again!  But then I actually used it for an extended duration and moved into my ‘the idea is sound, but it just needs more work’ phase.  I believed with the concerted effort of like-minded people and by including designers, UI experts and artists it was only a matter of time.  The third phase was that it was a shame that a great idea was being ruined by a defensive community of non-developer, non-contributing idiots intent on scaring away anyone who didn’t believe it was already perfect.  At least I was partially right that time.

And finally, I am where I am now: It’s a bad idea to the point of being dangerous and it just won’t work anyhow.

Here’s the thing.  Nobody owns GPL’d code.  The code is free.  You are not.  For example you, as a user, have more freedoms when it comes to BSD licensed code – effectively you can do what you want with it, provided you provide credit.  GPL’d code on the other hand has a slew of limitations on what you can and cannot do and attaches a larger burden on you in terms of distribution of changes and source.  The code is more ‘free’ under the GPL.  By GPL’ing code you effectively say ‘nobody owns this, it belongs to itself’.  I can sell BSD code and deny you your ‘fundamental right’ to freely distribute it further.  I can also grant you the same right as the GPL.  The GPL simply ensures you cannot stop anyone from modifying and distributing.

The problem with the above is that it entirely negates ownership.  You cannot ‘own’ free software.  It doesn’t matter if you wrote it – it’s not yours.  As soon as you release software under the GPL you have no more right to it than any of the other 6 billion people on the planet.  It’s why FOSS advocates call closed source (distastefully) ‘slavery’, as closed source software is owned and controlled by someone.

The ramifications of this are obvious – you can’t make money selling free software.  You can sell it, but so can everyone.  If you’ll need to sell 10,000 copies at £100 each to reclaim your investment and the kid in the local computer store will sell them for £5 to anyone that wants one then you’re simply never going to break even.  The whole ‘you can sell free software’ excuse is intellectually dishonest as you have to compete with people with no sunk or running costs.  The best you can do is put up an online tip-jar and rely on effectively begging – and I’ve yet to hear of that working well.

Effectively, what the GPL and the Free Software movement says, is that developers do not deserve to be compensated for their effort.  Unless they can manage to sell the first copy for £1,000,000 then there is no way to ever get paid for the time spent.  It simply can’t be done.  If you want to man a phone line, do email support, work as a call out technician, then you can (according to ‘software freedom’) demand a fair hourly wage, but if you are a developer you can’t.  It’s ‘immoral’.  Simply on the basis that you cannot own code, thus can’t charge money for it.

The argument often made about the above is that businesses still need programmers.  Which is true.  But this is where the whole thing unravels fully.  I am a programmer – say I have an idea for a great new CMS tool*.  I now have two options:

1. Quit my job, rely on my family to put up with me for a few months while I spend 12hrs+ a day working on it.
2. Take my idea to a large company such as IBM, Oracle, Microsoft or someone else like that.

As above, according to the ‘software freedom’ camp if I picked option 1. as soon as I released it it would be mine no more.  The second I tried to charge money for it it would just be forked and given away.  Instead of relying on the future income I could have gained from selling it at launch to pay back the debts I would have no doubt incurred, and to fund new development, I would be forced to ‘get a job’.  Any development work would have to be done in evenings and weekends – and I would effectively be forced to decide between programming what I want, or my marriage.  Plus the software would progress more slowly as I would not have much time to devote to it.

Now with option 2. there is pretty much zero chance of getting taken up on my idea.  You don’t tell a business that you want to hire you what you are going to work on.  Unless you are really, really famous.  Chances are unless your surname is something like ‘Carmack’ you’re going to be writing the mundane stuff that they want you to do – not your own exciting ideas.

There are companies that are based around and heavily involved in free software.  Names include companies such as Red Hat, Mozilla, IBM, Canonical, Google, Novell etc and the one thing about these companies is that they are not in the software sales business.  Red Hat is in providing support and SLA’s for businesses and servers. IBM is similar to Red Hat – they sell ‘solutions’.  Mozilla makes money from advertising for Google, Canonical is a billionaire’s plaything, Google sells advertising and Novell is just a slightly more pragmatic Red Hat.  You’ll never see a company such as Adobe adopt a FOSS business model as they are in the business of selling software.  I don’t imagine anyone can make the argument that Adobe can go FOSS and remain profitable with a straight face.

It’s the following realisation that made me realise what a disaster FOSS really is.  Free Software only benefits large companies and the rich.  It is almost impossible to be a developer and not work for ‘the man’ under the GPL.  Sure there are exceptions to every rule but the simple fact is you can’t be a developer unless you can get an alternate revenue stream.  Support is good, but not a lot of apps will require support and you don’t spend months programming to be forced to make money manning a phone line.  There are also the dual license options, but this is effectively shareware, and you are still making money selling closed source software.

If adhering to the GPL was a legal requirement then it’s not like software would all suddenly be free and open.  What would actually happen is that people would simply stop making software.  All the games available on Steam would not suddenly be free – they simply wouldn’t have been made in the first place.  I pay money for SmartFTP because it is the best FTP program I have ever used.  By paying money I help fund further development.  I am happy with this.

It’s not even like the mass piracy and commoditization of  music, as it’s not like developers can make money selling tickets at £50 a go to live shows.  The software itself is all you’ve got.

Now I simply don’t see how anyone who thinks pragmatically about a future in which the GPL is accepted as the way to distribute software can possibly support it as in reality the people it hurts the most are the very people that support it – individual developers.

* True story, I do.  I am working on it and plan to launch it in a few months.

Some Further Thoughts and Ugly Truths:

The most overlooked point with regards to software development is that it is generally the result of a few people sinking a large amount of time into it, not as a result of a lot of people doing a small bit.  You simply can’t throw developers at a project and expect it to flourish – it just doesn’t work.  If you want something well written and cohesive it’ll take a small, dedicated, team – not a large bunch of semi-skilled volunteers – not something that really happens in FOSS unless you are being funded by a rich 3rd party.

Capitalism, in a nutshell, is providing people what they want.  If you don’t provide it you don’t succeed.  If enough people don’t want it the provider can either improve and adapt, or die.  In the FOSS world you take what you’re given and have no right to complain.  Gimp is near useless and doesn’t even match the decade old Photoshop 5.0 yet people not using it will not spur on development.  There is simply no motivation to cater for a wide audience – if Gimp was a commercial product the company would have been bankrupt years ago but catering for your users needs is simply not important in the world of free software.  Free software is about developers scratching their own itch, not finding out what itch other people want scratched.

The bulk of FOSS development work is done by one of these people:

• Students, getting paid to learn.
• Unemployed, getting paid by the state.
• The Rich, resting on their laurels.
• Large companies, adding value to their other services.

Free software is categorically not made by these people:

• Software companies.

If it is name one.

Software development is hard.  It’s incredibly time consuming.  If most people truly appreciated the difficulty and time required to create a truly great piece of software I doubt they would have bothered.  It requires people with a true passion for development to make truly great software, and I personally find the fact that such people would be relegated to only doing what they love in their spare time, rather than as an actual job, disgusting.

And finally it is the software that is free, not you.  All this talk of ‘freedoms’ and ‘rights’ is utter crap – it’s not your freedom or your rights so the whole idea that commercial software is taking them is simply untrue.  If a developer wants to release something under a Libre license that is fine – but it should never be considered ‘ethical’ or expected for this to be the case and if you really want to make a case for your own ‘freedoms’ then the BSD license is far more appropriate candidate.

Open Source is simply providing software with the source code so the receiving user can modify it to suit their needs.

Free Software is having the ability to freely modify and (this is the key) distribute software they have received from a 3rd party.

Free Software is being *unable* to restrict what a 3rd party does with your software.

You can very easily have non-free Open Source.  In fact a large amount of software made, mainly custom stuff and most of what I do, is technically ‘Open Source’ – that is I am paid to to do it, and I give the client the source along with any binaries.  It is *not* Free Software though, as the client is unlikely to give it away.

For example a large amount of commercial web apps are Open Source in that you have access to the source code, but are not Free Software as you do not have the right to redistribute the source freely.

This is the main bone of contention between the Commercial and Free Software camps – it has nothing to do with source – which is a red herring – it has to do with control.  The main point of free software is to remove any and all control from the original developers and give it to the users – the software is owned by the community.  Supporters of the commercial model (obviously) have a problem with this as it makes making a business out of developing software impossible – If you sell support you are in the business of support, not software.  Free Software is fundamentally anti developer.

Personally I support Open Source, and plan on releasing my next project as a dual licensed Free Non-Commercial and pay for Commercial offerings.  You can use it for free and give it away if you do not use it commercially, and if you want to use it commercially you will be required to pay a license fee.  Which is perfectly reasonable but it is not ‘Free Software’ and would not be supported by the FSF.

Free Software is an ethical line for it’s supporters.  Non-free (as the example above) is considered immoral by supporters and according to the FSF I am unethical in my request for compensation for commercial usage.  According to the FSF doctrine I must relinquish all ownership over the code and give any user full source and distribution rights.  If I want to make money I should sell ‘support’.

The thing is if (and many people suggest this) I was legally forced to make it ‘Free’ I would not even bother to make it in the first place.  In that world the job of ‘developer’ either would not exist, or would be relegated to a role in a huge corporation where you are told what to work on.  The small, independent software companies would be dead – and the software that they would have produced would not now be free, it just wouldn’t exist in the first place.  So instead of having the choice to pay money for something or not have it, you’d simply not be able to have it at all.  Not a situation I can support.

I think if people stopped thinking Free Software and Open Source are interchangeable terms, and that if more people found out what Free Software really is, and the implications, significantly less people would support it.

Update: I do not think that Free Software is bad, should be banned, or anything like that.  I believe it is up to the developer to choose how to distribute their software and that there is nothing wrong with closed source, commercial software.  It is up to the developer to choose the license, and the user to choose the software.  It’s all about choice.

You hear it all the time “Free as in beer” and “Free as in freedom” used to describe FOSS.  But this question seems to be missed:

“Where can I get free beer?”

No pub will just give it to me, if someone buys me one I am expected to buy them one back at some point.  I could brew my own but I still need to buy all the equipment and spend a lot of time and money.  Guess what?

“There is no such thing as free beer!”

I get the whole “Free as in freedom” thing, I really do.  In an age of excessive DRM and activation the ability to have access to the source is incredibly useful.  As a developer dealing with PHP on a regular basis I am often stumped by ‘compiled’ PHP which makes a problem a customer is having impossible to fix as the original developers do not give their customers permission to fix their own problems.

It’s this whole “Free as in beer” craze that makes utterly no sense.  Name me any other discipline where you expect to get anything for free.  Architects will not design you a free house, Lawyers will not defend you for free (unless it is in their best interests), People will not wash your car, house, clothes or computer for free.  And pretty much nobody will fix your computer for free.  Yet is expected and even considered immoral to charge money for software!*

Developing software is hard.  It takes a ridiculous amount of time and effort – I should know, I do it full time.  Yet Under the FOSS regime I am expected to work for months on producing something then not only provide the source with the product (which I can accept and often do), but to also give away every single one of my rights as its creator, giving me no more ownership or rights over it than any random yahoo off of the street?

And the FOSS solution to this?  Sell ‘support’.  What?  So as the softwares creator, to recoup the months of investment I need to provide bottom rung email and phone support which I wouldn’t even do if I was paid.  I would rather be unemployed than tech support, yet in the FOSS world that is my only option to even consider recouping my investment if I decided to have a career in software development.

“But big companies support FOSS”

Fantastic! Instead of working on what I want to work on, and creating innovative software that I think will fill a niche which I will then sell to make money to fund further development, I should instead go to work for IBM who will tell me what to write if they even hire me at all?  That doesn’t sound like any freedom I have ever heard of – it sounds like being a wage slave to enrich a large corporation.  “Free as in freedom to work for IBM”, but not “Free as in freedom to write your own software”.

“But Linux Torvalds wasn’t supported by IBM”

There are two types of FOSS projects:

1. Spoilers:
   Commercial software companies that realise their pay-for software is largely no longer saleable – Mozilla, Sun, OpenOffice etc.  It’s normal, conventional, closed source software that was ‘opened’ in response to the market.  You can’t sell browsers anymore (see Opera) so you need to either give up, or find alternate revenue.  Firefox makes its money from Google, OpenOffice is crap compared to MS Office and is given away in an attempt to provide value to the systems it’s given away on – and also as a ‘fuck you’ to Microsoft.
2. Students:
   The bulk of the non-commercially contributed FOSS code is made by students.  That is people that are being funded externally to learn about computers and use their knowledge, resources and free time to create ‘free’ software.  Obviously they largely don’t want to sell it as then they will have to deal with large amounts of problems (including actually finishing it) and it’s fun to create it, not a job. By giving it away free rather than charging they are not beholden to their customers for quality or bugs.  “Fix it yourself” is the mantra of the student developers.
   

There is one, very notable, absence from this list:

• Conventional, small, development shops working on producing free software full time – that is the non-corporate, individual development house.  They are the one business that simply cannot survive under the FOSS model, which is ironic as it’s probably the best situation to be in as a programmer.

Lets face it here, you can’t make money writing FOSS software.  You can use it to assist in an aspect of your multi-faceted business as, in theory, community contributions will improve your software for free – If I run a business selling special widgets and make a FOSS special widget tracker, then other people selling these special widgets would improve the software if they used it also so I (and my business) would benefit from it.

What FOSS does not allow is for someone to say “Aha!  There is a market for software for companies selling special widgets, I’ll make some.” – your going to be able to sell a few at best before someone takes your code, rebrands it and gives it away.  You essentially have to compete with yourself.

This is the point where some FOSS advocates offer up other ways of monetizing my Special Widgets software – Selling support (bleh), customizing for individual businesses, support contracts (bleh).  But what they are asking for is for me to dump a business model that has worked for thousands of years – you give me something, I give you something in return – and instead adopt an entirely unproven method of “you give me nothing, I give you something in return and then try to figure out how to make money at a later date.”

Why should I have to dump a perfectly functional business model to adopt something incredibly uncertain and very likely to make me bankrupt simply because some idiots on a crusade say I should?

Whats really needed is the ability to decouple this moronic notion of ‘Free as in beer’ from ‘Free as in freedom’, as unless everyone, including butchers, bakers and candlestick makers also give everything away for free** then it’s just not going to work.

* Yes, I know you can sell software for money according to the GPL.  What everyone loves to gloss over is the fact that anyone you sell it to can just give it away for free – so you will very soon be competing against your own product, but free.  The GPL is fundamentally incompatible with conventional for-profit software sales.  There are some choice early RMS quotes where he basically says this – the only reason for-profit sales are allowed is that they are unworkable.

** Yes, it’s been tried, no, it hasn’t ever worked and yes, it’s called ‘communism’.

It is unarguable that Apple is having massive success now.  Their unwavering focus on user experience in emerging markets has led to some great products that are, rightly, doing well.  Apple ‘get it’ when it comes to design and the fact that even now large amounts of people and companies think that it is just down to bling and marketing show how far away the competition largely is from understanding this.

That being said the latest action against Palm shows their true colours.  For those not following the story, when Palm released the Pre they made it appear to iTunes as if it was an iPod, thus enabling easy native sync.  Now Apple have disabled this little workaround in the latest release of iTunes, with this cute little note ‘addresses an issue with verification of Apple devices.’ Basically Apple do not allow any non Apple devices to easily sync with iTunes.  It’s funny how Apple does not make iCameras and thus all cameras can sync with their photo software, yet they do make mp3 players so feel the need to block competitors.

Lets look at Apple’s market share for iTunes (from Wikipedia):

• Steve Jobs announced in his “It’s Showtime” keynote that Apple had 88% of the legal U.S. music download market on September 12, 2006.[44]
• Apple announced that the iTunes Store had sold more than two million movies, making it the world’s most popular online movie store on April 11, 2007.[53]
• Apple announced that iTunes Store surpassed Best Buy to become the second biggest music seller in the USA behind Wal-Mart on February 26, 2008 and eventually became number one on April 3, 2008.[1]

So Apple, that biggest music retailer in the world, let alone online, is deliberately breaking and blocking access for 3rd party hardware to leverage sales of it’s iPod and iPhone products.  Isn’t leveraging a dominant market position in one market to assist a product in another market anti-competitive?

Didn’t Microsoft get in trouble with bundling IE with Windows to increase its browser marketshare?  Aren’t the EU still getting all worked up over this issue?  Yet what Apple are doing is not only considered bundling, but actively blocking competitors.

Look at the App Store.  You have to pay money for the privilege of developing software, then you are limited on what apps you can actually write to ones that do not compete with Apple’s own apps (and a bunch of other draconian rules).  Then once you have created your app you can submit it to be approved.  And if Apple do not like it for any reason (or even no reason) it’s tough luck, with no recourse.  So what you spent 6 months writing it – just spend another 6 months writing something else, maybe that’ll be approved.

The question ‘are Apple a monopoly’ and ‘are they breaking laws’ is entirely irrelevant.  Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t, but their attitude and behaviour make Microsoft look like a box of kittens.  What if Microsoft decided that Windows Media Player would only sync with the Zune from now on?  What if they decided that Windows CE (or whatever they are calling the mobile phone OS these days) would only run ‘approved’ apps, and that you could only use IE on it?  What if Microsoft stopped iTunes from being installed on Windows?  The community of Microsoft haters would go utterly batshit insane on a previously unseen level before.  There would be an epic bashfest to end all bashfests and you wouldn’t hear the end of it for years.  It would be the new BSOD.

Yet Apple has a level of paranoid control that Microsoft could only dream of, yet everyone still thinks MS is the ‘big bad’ of the software world.  I just don’t get it – answers on a postcard.

What being said, this question occurred to me: What would happen if nobody broke the law?

Although filesharing was happening on IRC before Napster, it was really Napster that brought it mainstream.  Even though it was largely pre-broadband – I think I had a 28.9kbps modem at the time – it was a revolution.  You could have any song you wanted.  You didn’t have to save up, go to town, buy a record, and take it home – often not even knowing if it was worth it.

If everyone had a 100% respect for intellectual property laws, Napster would not have happened.  Also, software that rips music to your HDD would also not exist and people would not do it anyway.  As a knock on effect, portable MP3 players would not have come into being – there was no legal music to put on them so what was the point?

Apple would not have created the iPod, as what’s the point of a HDD based MP3 player with no music to put on it?  iTunes would not have been created as Apple are a hardware company, and iTunes purpose is to drive sales of hardware.

The MP3 format would just be an off comment in a mailing list somewhere – no more.

MySpace would not exist – as with no mainstream support of MP3 in the form of players, plugins or even knowing what it is it would be just another unknown, unsupported format  (vrml, svg anyone?).

Existing, new and upcoming bands would not post samples on their websites, and radio and tv would largely be the only way to find out about the bands you liked, and discover new ones.  Sure, someone may tell you about a great new band, but you’d have to watch the charts, or listen to the radio and hope that something was played.

So without  ‘piracy’, ‘theft’ and people that deserve to be sued for £1,000,0000,000 for downloading a few MP3′s that the entertainment industry claims are actually ‘destroying music’ we would still be at a mid 90′s level of technology.

Piracy drives technological advances.  Without piracy technology would not advance due to the music industries monopoly situation.  I can only come to one conclusion:

Piracy is Capitalism in action.

Piracy is the only real force of competition the music industry has.  Without it they have no reason to be competitive as the formats and the prices are (or were) fixed by agreement.  The consumers want cheaper music, and more of it, more convenience, more flexibility and more choice.  Since this was not being provided they went to the competition who actually provide a better quality product.

As well as the obvious bonus of cheaper, piracy provides better quality recordings – often 320kbps to flac – more freedom – you can put mp3′s on anything, drm’ed downloads are very limited in terms of what you can actually do with them – and choice – rare, bizarre, live, old and not label limited.

The music industry is not against illegal file sharing because they lose profits, not primarily.  They are against it as it forces them to compete, to evolve.  They are a buggy cart manufacturer in a world of automobiles, trying to sue engine makers as their whole business model* has been made largely obsolete by the advances of technology.

People are not fundamentally dishonest.  People are perfectly happy to to pay for things, but you need to offer a superior product at a competitive price.  The industry is still hanging on to the old, expensive, pricing model established when distribution was actually expensive, they are still trying to impose DRM and limitations on where you can buy something and where you can use it.

When the music industry provides tangible benefits that makes their product at least as good as, if not better, than their competitors (piracy) then their business will continue to decline.  It’s called ‘competition’.

* What the new business model will be is irrelevant, and fundamentally not our problem.  It’s up to the industry to work it out, not us.