You seem to be saying that by offering people the ability to view flash content, Adobe is forcing people to view Flash content. They're not the same thing.
If I want to view Flash on my smartphone today, I can buy... Well, if I want to view Flash on my smartphone later this year, I'll buy an Android phone. I will have that freedom of choice.
Adobe's handwaving is confusing people. Analysts report more Android phones are getting sold than iPhones. There is choice.
Your remark fails to consider the Whole Foods Market example. Whole Foods should be free to manage their own brand and inventory. Nobody should force Whole Foods to offer milk made using rBGH, regardless of whether offering it means people have to buy it.
Whole Foods milk is a disingenuous comparison. There is a fundamental difference in the product and the ethics involved by using hormones. A more proper comparison would be saying something along the lines of "Ranchers can only have worn jeans when working on the farm and in the processing plant -- no khakis or anything else." One can produce organic milk wearing whatever they want -- the end product is still the same. One can produce quality applications with various tools -- the end product is still good.
If Apple has a problem with the quality of the applications then it should reject them from the store. It simply doesn't compare to making a fundamentally different product.
On the contrary, I deliberately selected this example because the farmers using hormones to mass produce milk fast have successfully lobbied to force the organic milk farmers to label their organic milk saying "There's no proof the hormone milk is bad."
It's the same argument here.
The hormones accelerate milk production, like the cross-platform dev tools, and the end result is claimed to be the same, like you just claimed. Defensiveness about production methods and indistinguishable product still don't mean Whole Foods has to stock milk made that way.
Except there are verifiable differences in the product of hormone augmented, traditionally industrialized milk and the organic milk Whole Foods stocks. There are legitimate ethical arguments about environmental impacts and the treatment of animals between both systems.
There are not legitimate ethical arguments against someone coding something in python and porting it over to another environment. Without investigating the company in question, one could not determine what a piece of software was originally written in.
Even if something is technically legal or not worth pursuing in court, it still doesn't mean a company isn't acting uncouthly.
> Well, if I want to view Flash on my smartphone later this year, I'll buy an Android phone. I will have that freedom of choice.
Android, right now today, gives you the choice to turn Flash off if you don't like it.
Not having software available at all on an OS platform isn't choice. A supermarket is not an OS platform, but to continue abusing the analogy, Whole Foods bananas refusing to work in the same meal as Tesco milk would be Strange and Wrong.
> Not having software available at all on an OS platform isn't choice.
You choose the OS platform. And if this is the argument, why aren't people complaining that Windows doesn't run OSX apps, or that the PS3 doesn't run Xbox 360 games?
I think reasonable people understand the platform is the place they make a choice.
> A supermarket is not an OS platform, but to continue abusing the analogy, Whole Foods bananas refusing to work in the same meal as Tesco milk would be Strange and Wrong.
A supermarket absolutely is a platform, an architecture and framework for food distribution, distinguished from competing platforms by philosophy, branding, and positioning.
We're talking about the goods a store offers for sale, and the store's right to decide what goods to carry. We've established that production methodology is a widely accepted criterion for a store carrying or rejecting a good. The platform determines the goods offered, and the consumer chooses the platform.
> You choose the OS platform. And if this is the argument, why aren't people complaining that Windows doesn't run OSX apps, or that the PS3 doesn't run Xbox 360 games?
If someone had a great OS X app they'd ported to Windows, and Microsoft refused to run it, yes indeed, I'd be furious.
I think you're actually the first genuine troll I've met on HackerNews. Feel free to continue posting by this is the last time I'm responding to your posts.
You seem to be saying that by offering people the ability to view flash content, Adobe is forcing people to view Flash content. They're not the same thing.