In message <a4d8f55f-7845-4299- bfb8-5c2f15914...@f13g2000vbm.googlegroups.com>, Paul Boddie wrote:
> If you think the mobile telephony vendors are a bunch of fluffy bunny > rabbits playing with each other in sugary meadows of niceness, I don't > want to be present when someone directly and finally disabuses you of > this belief. The rise to popularity of Free Software had nothing to do with meadows full of mobile bunny-meat, and everything to do with the hard realities of the marketplace. Vendors discovered that they could make hardware running a Linux kernel do more things than it could with proprietary alternatives. In the beginning they derided the GPL as “business-unfriendly”, until they grudgingly accepted that, just as it prevented them from freeloading off their competitors, it stopped those same competitors from freeloading off them. The network effects translated into real profits. > It's all about people selling stuff to "consumers" over > and over again, preferably with the "consumers" rarely if ever being > able to opt-out and do things their own way. Interesting you should mention that. That is exactly how mobile phone networks have been operated right up until now. And Apple’s business model has fitted very well into that too, as witness the success of the iPhone. But Google’s Android could represent a shift in that model. Yes, it does seem to be locked down in its way, but given that most of the source code is available, that hardly seems watertight. The phone networks may see it as just another phone platform that the plebs are happy to shell out their hard-earned for, but I think it could ultimately lead to a loss of their proprietary control. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
