...a small percentage of the criticism towards Apple is included below for reference purposes:
Some of these guys are considered Titans within the software business, Paul Graham, Peter-Paul Koch and Joe Hewitt are probably between them the equivalent of the Elvis, Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney of the Software Business. And all of these guys are people who have previously *LOVED* Apple. I remember reading a blog from Paul Graham where he said; "I remember where I was when I heard about Steve Jobs having cancer, and my world stopped for a while until I read that it wasn't a deadly type of cancer". So we're not talking about the average "hate Apple, love Microsoft" guys here. We're talking about some of the Titans of both the Web and Software as a whole, and we're also talking about the foundation of Apple's dedicated community of users.
But more interesting is the fact that everyone, including me, seems to know what's wrong with the App Store. It's got too many walls!
What's wrong with the App Store
First of all you must use Objective C and Cocoa which is a weird and unintuitive proprietary Apple language [and framework] for creating iPhone applications. Although I realize that not everyone agree with me on this point, but none the less an interesting point for people already not dedicated to Objective C and Cocoa.
Then when you have finally managed to get your brain around Objective C and Cocoa, you discover that there's no way you can create Free Software for the iPhone. The iPhone cannot possibly run Free Software unless you explicitly jail-break it, which Apple is now trying to outlaw...
When you're finally finished creating your app, after several months of development, you submit it to the App Store just to get a letter back giving you some silly reasons as to why it was *REJECTED*...
On top of this, if your app gets approved, which is not to be taken for granted these days, you have about the same chance as a snowball in hell getting a decent return on your investments.
Something is *VERY* wrong here...!!
I have previously written passionately about how Open Web technology can be your "backdoor into the App Store", but now I've had it! I am tired of sitting still and watching the world growing higher and higher walls and developers flocking to the "walled App Stores" of this world as moth to light bulbs, only to get burned while the empire grows bigger and bigger!
And I realize I have to do something about it myself! It doesn't seem as there's a line of others wanting to do it, so here we go!
The Free Software / Open Web - App Store!
Today we release our Open Web, Free Software and no-walls Market Place for developers wanting to create Ra-Brix Open Web applications and sell them through our market place!
But instead of me telling you in words how this works, let's spend about 10 minutes on a couple of YouTube videos and see it in action:
Ra-Brix App-Store 1 of 2
Ra-Brix App-Store 2 of 2
We want others to help and participate in building an Open Web and Open Source market place where users of Ra-Brix can download applications, either for free or for a fee, and the only restriction we put on applications is that they must not be malware, intentionally created to destroy end-users systems, in addition to that they also must be legal.
If you choose to give your apps away for free, you can do that. If you wish to charge your end users a fee for your apps, then we will take 20% commission.
Notice!
If you want to distribute your applications in our Market Place, they must be distributed under the GNU General Public License. This means that your users must have access to the source code [and the rights to modify it and distribute it] if they wish.
In practice this is no problem, since we will grant you a exclusive right - which we're working on as we speak - for distributing your applications through our Market Place as long as you maintain it and create new versions of it. So even though people technically could fork your apps, and distribute them [legally] for less money [or for free for that matter], they will not be allowed to distribute those apps through our Market Place, this also includes *us*, at least not as long as you actively support your apps and you maintain them and come out with new releases "frequently". Exactly what that means is in the workings now as we speak.
This is about giving the users of your applications all the rights we can possibly give them! So your users gets:
- The right to run your app
- The right to modify your app
- The right to learn from your app
- The right to distribute it, modified or un-modified
- The right to run it on every piece of equipment that can run Open Web apps
- The right to own their own data, on their own server
While you as a developer get the right to:
Earn money selling your app to our end users!
Believe me, we have spent a significant amount of time figuring out how to be able to do this ... ;)
Notice that at the moment, the Market Place is very BETA, so is Ra-Brix also, but we're prioritizing this as our 1st, 2nd and 3rd priority, so everything here will go very fast! We will come out with a road-map later that will tell you when you can expect to see the Market Place have support for payments and such. But if you want to start developing now, all you need to do is to download Ra-Brix and start developing your apps :)
And if you need help, you can send me a personal email, and I will follow you up personally until the number of users becomes so large that we need to implement some better and more scalable way of communication.
This is as far as I know the first Free Software and Open Web Market Place in the world, and it is highly BETA. But we do believe strongly in the Bazaar Development Model, so help us out create the road as we walk it, suggestions and such are highly appreciated.
Have fun, under the Sun :)
.t