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by tpmoney 677 days ago
> They already cover the device's (and iOS's) R&D costs with more money to spare.

So like I said, "free, unlimited, unrestricted access to all of Apple's SDKs and libraries indefinitely", just with an implied "with all costs borne by the end consumer purchasers of the hardware" tacked on to the end? Obviously all costs are eventually borne by the consumer, but given that Apple has dropped the "can't charge more on iOS then elsewhere" requirements, couldn't developers just raise their prices for their products on iOS and we could skip all of this extra rigamarole?

Edit:

And to be clear, I really don't have a huge issue with a developer saying "I don't want to pay any of the costs of supporting or developing the platform that I use to sell my goods and services. I want the provider of that platform to extract the costs of providing that platform to me from the end users on that platform that I am selling to". That's a well trod model in the computer space, and it would be hypocritical of me to argue that's somehow wrong when my entire professional career is built on platforms and services that I pay nothing to maintain or support.

I just think that we should recognize what we're doing and be honest with ourselves. Part of why major open source projects have funding issues is in part because we do this a lot in the software world, but a lot of those open source projects don't have end users to charge either because the developers are the end users. We are lucky that Apple has end users to bear our costs for us.

1 comments

> we are lucky that Apple has end users to bear our costs for us.

Talk for yourself. Apple is lucky to have a fanbase like this.