iTunes is now the number one music retailer in the U.S. If they declared that only DRM-free tracks would be sold through their store, they could make it happen. And unless I’m mistaken (I readily admit I’ve never even used iTunes), their ringtones, TV shows, and other content are still DRM-laden. Why should someone have to pay twice for a ringtone sample of a song they’ve already bought?

Now, I also realize that Apple has done a great job of holding the price of their tracks to 99 cents, and that is something that the record companies hate. So the big media companies are cutting deals with the likes of Amazon and Wal-Mart, with completely DRM-free selections, to try to gain some of that control back.

I think that has a lot to do with Mr. Jobs’ open letter: he’s trying to paint himself as the good guy, standing up for the Free Use rights of the little man. But it’s all talk and not enough action. DRM is a large part of what allowed iTunes and iPod to wind up in the enviable position they’re in.

Aside from DRM, there are plenty of other examples of how Apple is anti-open, from their OS X license prohibiting their software from being run on non-Apple hardware (including virtual machines), to their overzealous takedown notices and legal threats against fan sites that leak rumors.

Now, I’m very pro-capitalist and I congratulate and applaud Apple for the remarkable and dramatic turnaround they’ve had since Mr. Jobs has been back at the helm. I understand why they embraced DRM in the first place, why they refused to license it to others, and why they are now saying that they wish they could get rid of it if only the mean record companies would let them.

But when I look at the company’s actions as a whole, I frankly don’t see a whole lot of difference between them and Microsoft from the openness perspective. I think that if Apple had the marketshare that Microsoft did, they would be every bit as much of a threat to the future of technological freedom.

And speaking of empty promises to become open :) … thanks to Adobe’s lack of providing an open-source Flash player, or even any Flash player for 64-bit Linux, I can’t see SpinWeb’s front page!

Great post! Even though I’m an Apple disciple, I totally respect your commitment to open source. Anything is better than Microsoft ;-)

I did want to point out one thing, however. I don’t think this comment is totally accurate:

“But Steve Jobs and the Apple corporate culture just make me nervous. Their enthusiastic support of DRM and their attempts to close and control all aspects of their devices and codecs just rubs me the wrong way.”

Since 2007, Apple has actually shown enthusiastic support for a DRM-free world, as revealed here in Steve Jobs’ open letter:

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/

Today, iTunes has a wide selection of DRM-free music that can be purchased as alternatives to the restricted tracks. More details on this can be found at:

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/10/17itunes.html

Hope this was helpful ;-)

Thanks!
Mike

Aside from that, their ASP.NET support lags quite a bit behind the MS version. I’ve never really used ASP.NET for my own websites, but we use it at work so it’s nice to be able to play around with stuff at home too. I do have VMWare Server installed on my Linux server so I will probably end up using that for when I need to develop in Windows.

And yes, I do agree that Mono is potentially a patent trap, but frankly, I don’t think Microsoft has the guts to fire the “first shot”. I think that, if anything, they will continue to use the threat of patents as a basis of spreading FUD and extorting license fees from large businesses and specific distros, but I don’t think they are going to outright sue an open-source project, especially since Novell (who now owns Mono) is one of their “preferred” Linux partners.

It’s not Visual Studio, but it’s a solid .NET environment and complete CLR. Parts of it are GPL, LGPL, and MIT X11 licensed.

I run Fedora 8 as my primary use OS and WinXP inside VMware Server. (Required to have MS Access for classes. Otherwise, I’d ditch).

IMHO, dual-booting is nice if you use both platforms near-equally. When you’re trying to move away from one, stick it in a VM and live in your primary as much as possible.