[_benton]

What right does a company have to piggyback off of another company?

Like think about this logically? Should a grocery store be forced to sell my products without receiving any of the profit? Can I force a cafe to let me serve customers on their premises without giving anything in return?

[whstl]

> What right does a company have to piggyback off of another company?

Apple has no right to piggybacking off of another company's business. Therefore the 30% must go.

[_benton]

They aren't piggybacking, they provide the infrastructure, marketplace, and platform.

[Intermernet]

They explicitly prevent other companies from providing this infrastructure, marketplace and platform. Apple don't offer this stuff as a favour to developers, they demand that developers use it and prevent them from using anything else. Apple aren't some Good Samaritan providing a centralised set of services out of the goodness of their hearts, they are forcing companies to pay an exorbitant fee to be able to play in their garden, and they make billions of dollars in profit from this.

Compare Apple with Steam (who also provide the infrastructure, marketplace and platform). Steam don't force developers to use their services. They're still successful, but you can get almost every game on Steam from somewhere else. This is what I'd ideally like Apple to do. It wouldn't make any difference to me, as I haven't owned or developed for Apple devices in many decades, but it would make a huge difference to many developers, and many device owners. I doubt it will actually make that much difference to Apple's profits, but it would make a difference to the rapidly declining good will they have in the developer community, and increasingly in their customers.

[whstl]

Apple is forcing companies and users to use this infrastructure, so this is indeed Apple piggybacking and putting its hands where it shouldn't.

[saubeidl]

They're not piggybacking off another company if they use alternative distribution networks.

Should the construction company that built the grocery store be able to take a cut off grocery profits and have a say in what the store is selling?

[_benton]

Depends on the contract between the grocery store and the construction company.

[whstl]

Also depends on legislation. If the government says "fuck you" to the construction company, it has to comply.

[saubeidl]

I don't think a construction company, much less one that has a near-monopoly in a market, should be able to set insane terms like that.