The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has officially allowed the FSFE to intervene in the litigation brought by Apple against the European Commission to avoid being designated as a ‘gatekeeper’ under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). The company has put forward an aggressive policy against Software Freedom and interoperability, seeking to deter the enforcement of the DMA – a law dedicated to increase fairness and contestability in digital markets by regulating the economic behaviour of very large tech corporations. The FSFE aims to protect Free Software against monopolistic corporate control.
Yes, at the point where the only thing hindering free software from running on a device is the policies of the organization SELLING the device, it should be the policies that change, not the ability of software to remain free.
I choose iOS because of the walls, but I also sideload software. That sideloading is limited in the number of products I can sideload at a time, and it requires a sync connection with a computer. I kinda sorta agree with Apple’s restricting of sideloaded software to a limited number of apps, but the computer/XCode requirement could easily be solved in other ways.
The goal is to make it difficult to trick someone into installing a malicious payload; Apple should allow individuals to self-sign software and run it in a sandbox— just like they do with Progressive Web Apps.
I mean, if I can download and run a PWA of a Palm emulator from a web page, why can’t I do the exact same thing with the same levels of protection with a native app? Only thing stopping me is an Apple App Store policy.
