There’s a lot of discord over Apple’s draconian “closed” handling of the iPhone and App store. And rightly so. But there are a few interesting lessons in the current situation. The one I want to discuss now is that,<\/p>\n
As things stand today, Apple can’t stop you from installing any<\/em> damn iPhone app if you build yourself<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n To do that you have to join<\/a> the iPhone developer program of course. And there’s a $99\/year fee. That’s inconvenient<\/em>, but it’s just using a subscription-based way of selling iPhone OS: Developer Edition<\/cite>.<\/p>\n That’s the kind of dirty money-grabbing scheme I’d expect from Microsoft<\/a>. It’s a bit shady, because it’s not how most OSes are sold. But it’s not without precedent<\/a>. And unless you are against ever<\/em> charging money for software, I don’t think there’s an argument that it’s actually depriving people of freedom<\/em>.<\/p>\n Yes, it’s an unaffordably high price for many. But the iPhone is a premium good<\/a> that costs real money to build — it’s inherently beyond many people’s means, even when subsidized.<\/p>\n If you have a great iPhone app that Apple won’t allow into the store, you can still give it to me in source code form, and since I have iPhone OS: Developer Edition<\/cite>, I can run it on my iPhone.<\/p>\n But clearly that’s not good enough.<\/p>\n In fact, I’m not aware of any<\/em> substantive iPhone App that’s distributed as source. By “substantive” I mean an app with a lot of users — say as many as the 100th most downloaded App Store app — or an app that does something that makes people jealous, like tethering (See update!), which we know<\/a> is possible using the SDK. I realize this is a wishy-washy definition — what I’m trying to say is that distributed-as-source iPhone Apps seem to be totally irrelevant<\/strong>.<\/p>\n I believe it’s technically<\/em> possible to run Linux on an iPhone without jail-breaking it. (Although it’s not terribly practical.) Just build Linux (or an emulator that runs Linux<\/a>) as an iPhone app, and leave it running all the time to get around the limitations on background processes.<\/p>\n Apple won’t allow such a thing into the App Store of course —but how does that stop you from distributing the source for it<\/strong>? As best I can tell, it doesn’t.<\/p>\n So as things stand today, yes you can distribute source code that lets any iPhone OS: Developer Edition<\/cite> user run Linux<\/strong>. It’s technically challenging, but it’s doable.<\/p>\n It’s possible to build open systems on top of closed systems. We’ve done it before when we built the internet on Ma Bell’s back<\/a>.<\/p>\n But the iPhone remains a closed device. User-compiled applications have 0 momentum. And I think that clearly shows the irrelevance of the rare “programmer user”, who is comfortable dealing with the source code for the programs he uses.<\/p>\nObservation: Only Binaries Matter<\/h3>\n
“It’s not open until I can put Linux on it”<\/h3>\n
Conclusion<\/h3>\n