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Mozilla and Skype Take Aim at Apple's Closed iPhone Policies

As noted by The Register, Mozilla and Skype are lining up behind The Electronic Frontier Foundation's campaign to ease restrictions on iPhone jailbreaking. Both Skype and Mozilla have filings in to the U.S. Copyright Office arguing that the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) should be changed to allow mobile phone users to choose to modify their handsets, applications and carriers. It's an argument for openness, and I'm surprised that more people aren't chastising Apple for its closed policies regarding both jailbreaking and iPhone application development.

In Mozilla's filing, the iPhone is actually never mentioned specifically, while Skype's filing mentions it once. However, it's very clear that the filings are largely aimed at Apple's policies, and Mozilla has expressed much frustration with Apple's licensing policies surrounding the iPhone before.

The Register notes this regarding Mozilla's VP and General Counsel Harvey Anderson's statements:

Chiding "some cellular phone providers" who prevent their phones from loading unapproved but "legitimately obtained software," Anderson contends that forcing a user to jailbreak their phone to install software "distributed outside the carrier or phone vendor's store" has a "chilling effect on users and on innovation."

Anderson's argument basically boils down to the fact that the Internet should be an open resource with open standards, and that wireless plans and applications surrounding it should be open as well. How hard is it for anyone to see the logic in that?

This is part of why, in the long run, I think open source mobile platforms will flourish, especially if applications such as Mozilla's open source mobile browser Fennec gain traction. Mozilla's plan with Fennec is to reach out to extensions in the same way Firefox does. If it becomes a must-have browser, and both Mozilla and extension developers are boxed out of Apple's closed mobile strategy, that could really challenge Apple. Apple gets a lot more iPhone love than it does criticism for its closed policies. In the end, I predict it will have to embrace more open policies.


 

• mozilla
• iphone
• Apple
• skype

by an anonymous user on Feb. 19, 2009

>I'm surprised that more people aren't chastising Apple for its closed policies

You are?

Its pretty, that's all that matters.

You sure arent going to hear the Mac fanbois at places like Macbreak Weekly say anything but a perfunctory 'that's not nice' (wink,wink).

While the rest of the mainstream tech press at Rev3, TWIT, CNET and elsewhere will forgive easily because....well, they make pretty things.

I listenend to V.Belmont tell Leo Laporte all the things that werent working on her Iphone and at the end of the exhaustive list of problems, she says she loves it. My coworker calls its battered wife syndrome (when the husband is real pretty)

They could be using baby organs to power their machines and I doubt it would get much more than a casual mention.

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