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by smoldesu 1361 days ago
> As I understand it, 30% pays for all of the frameworks Apple develops that is available to you when you fire up Xcode, as well as everything involved with running the store, and they take their cut when you post on their store and sell stuff.

Xcode is free, though. Apple 'takes their cut' when you pay $99/year to be a registered Apple developer. If that's not enough, then maybe they need to review the checkbook again. Whatever the case is, Apple made a mistake by attaching the success of their software platform to the success of their App Store. The future of the internet was never going to be proprietary, they should have known that back when Microsoft was sued over IE. It's not illegal, but they're certainly teeing themselves up for the most radical antitrust scrutiny witnessed to-date.

It's just a dick move. Consumer advocacy groups should have fixed this by now, but Apple's legendary PR and reality distortion field has fended off most attacks so far.
1 comments
simondotau 1361 days ago
> Xcode is free, though.

Unreal Engine is "free" too.

Except it isn't. Neither Unreal Engine nor Apple's developer frameworks (shipped alongside Xcode) are public domain or copyleft. They're both proprietary code available under a license that permits certain usages, disallows certain usages, is royalty free under some conditions, and requires payment under other conditions.

> Apple 'takes their cut' when

That's not for you to decide. Epic can decide when to take money from developers who use Unreal Engine, and how much they're entitled to. It's equally Apple's decision which payment represents compensation for the developer's use of their intellectual property, and how much they're entitled to.

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dmitriid 1361 days ago
> Neither Unreal Engine nor Apple's developer frameworks (shipped alongside Xcode) are public domain or copyleft.

You're confusing free with libre. Apple's software and Unreal are free as in "free beer".

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simondotau 1361 days ago
> You're confusing free with libre.

I'm not confusing them. The fact that they are not libre is precisely the point I was making. They are both proprietary intellectual property and encumber the person using them with financial obligations under some conditions.

> Apple's software and Unreal are free as in "free beer".

No, they are not. They're free as in "free beer when consumed on our premises, max five per customer, and if you sell our free beer to someone else we'll take some of that revenue thank you very much".

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dmitriid 1361 days ago
The comment you were replying to wasn't talking about free as in speech. They were talking about free as in beer. And the whole thread talks about money and cost. Not their source code availability.
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simondotau 1361 days ago
> They were talking about free as in beer.

Right, and my point is that it's not free as in beer.

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dmitriid 1361 days ago
> Right, and my point is that it's not free as in beer.

But it is. Being free as in "free beer" has nothing to do with being or not being public domain or copyleft.

Public domain or copyleft refer to free as in "free speech".

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