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Ask HN: What happened to rational discourse?

20 points by NyxWulf ↗ HN
I'm curious why the reaction to the Apple Developer TOS change is making this community react so strongly. One of the main reasons I left Reddit for Hacker News was the level of discourse was elevated and the polemics and hysterics in the stories were almost non-existent. I don't disagree that the Apple dispute with Adobe is big news and calls for discussion. What concerns me is the freewheeling hysteria that seems to be driving the topic. As is almost always the case, I suspect this TOS change will either be modified, re-interpreted, or Apple will suffer community backlash. As for my personal opinion, I would feel a far keener loss by losing the valuable insight and discussion that has so far been present in this community than I would feel over a change in the Apple developer TOS.

15 comments

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pg
There are often days when things get bad here in one way or another, but I don't worry unless they stay that way.

At least when HN readers get hysterical it's about something (a) related to hacking and (b) really bad.

jimmyjim
>As is almost always the case, I suspect this TOS change will either be modified, re-interpreted, or Apple will suffer community backlash.

Are you sure the TOS would change, if there was no backlash, like the one you're seeing on HN right now?

Protests usually precede revolutions.

benwr
Not really: revolutions are usually preceded by protests.
aphyr
In some ways, I think the recent obsession over iphone ToS is a community backlash, though it seems overblown. I am surprised that four developers I know are dropping their iPhones at the end of contract and switching to Android. We must feel strongly about it.
nostrademons
Well, a lot of people have staked their livelihoods on iPhone/iPad development. Apple's recent moves have indicated that they're not to be trusted, and that they'll do what's right for Apple whether or not that destroys the livelihood of those that build upon the platform. The rational response to that is to diversify so that one company can't arbitrarily shut you down with a ToS change.
VBprogrammer
What I find most worrying is that I see very little, if any, gain in it for Apple. I'm not really sure why but it just seems like Apple is picking fights with Adobe and Google for no particular reason. It certainly doesn't benefit their customers, it alienates their developer community and has no benefit to Apple other than inflating their ego.
cheald
My take on it is that Apple is attempting to splinter the developer community, and force you to pick sides - will you develop for the iPhone, or for those other platforms? By killing cross-platform compilers, they're attempting to force developers into a corner, where they have to pick a platform to commit to, and they're banking on their superior marketshare to cause developers to pick the iPhone.

If successful, it would put a significant dent in the viabilty of the Android platform. If Apple can give an "us or them" (or do it twice) ultimatum and get people to pick them (even grudingly), then they've won. The Mac desktop floundered against the PC for years due in no small part to the fact that all the developers were developing for Windows, and didn't really put much thought into cross-compatibility with Macs. Apple is attempting to repeat history, but with themselves on the other end of the equation this time.

It's a risky, ballsy, and brazen gambit, but if they pull it off (after all, the suits who write those developers' paychecks just care about the $ on the balance sheet at the end of the quarter), it could be a decisive turning point against Android. Jobs is obviously doing his best to water down the Android market (they have PORN! UNCLEAN!) and Apple is in full-on assault mode against Android (via HTC at the moment), and there's a very good reason for it - Android is suddenly a very real threat.

According to the February metrics from AdMob, Android has a marketshare equivalent to Apple's in the US. Apple still has a hefty lead worldwide, but Android is growing by leaps and bounds, while the iPhone remains stagnant. That's a very real and very direct threat that Apple is pulling out all the stops to counter.

jdietrich
The phrase "straw that broke the camel's back" springs to mind. The anger and fear that you're witnessing has been building for years - since the launch of the App Store, maybe even back to the iPod with its proprietary connector and its proprietary software. For many people, their worst fears about the iPad platform have been confirmed by this TOS change. It might seem irrational, but as a loyal Mac user I'm genuinely worried about what little bombs might be in the TOS for OS 10.7.

The most influential and powerful man in technology has a vision that many of us find appalling. He is imposing that vision as we speak and is being very successful in doing so. After years of rational debate, many of us have come to a conclusion about Jobs's intentions for the computer industry - a conclusion I see as perfectly reasonable and rational. It is no good closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. The developer community needs to air its grievances now, while there is still something to play for.

ssp
maybe even back to the iPod with its proprietary connector and its proprietary software.

Geeks have really short memory: Apple has always been evil. In the famous 1989 lawsuit between Apple and Microsoft about whether look and feel could be protected by copyright, all self-respecting geeks rooted for Microsoft, and the League for Programming Freedom was founded basically in response to it.

prodigal_erik
We're toolmakers, so this just hits too close to home. We can't be completely objective about the idea that any platform vendor wants to ban our favorite tools and demand we use something mediocre (so much so that hardly anyone has willingly chosen it for decades). It just makes it worse that this one might have actually amassed enough power to get away with it.
skalpelis
I don't disagree on any particular point but I wouldn't call XCode mediocre in comparison to Adobe Flash (which is the most impacted tool in this decision).

Also, I believe, they are at least partly doing this to improve the quality of the App Store ecosystem and do this to avoid the tens of thousands of shite autogenerated apps that litter the app store and this move is more of a cleanup instead of screwing over the few people who prefer a different toolset for development and generally care about the quality of their applications. Baby with the bathwater, so to speak.

prodigal_erik
I have no informed opinion about XCode. I meant being limited to C++ and ObjC, both of which lack all the advances in language design and runtime safety that have been widely adopted since the 1980s.
bootload
"... I'm curious why the reaction to the Apple Developer TOS change is making this community react so strongly ..."

In some ways message boards are to hackers what close knit provincial rural communities are Jane Austen novels. A place of petty intrigue and gallantry.

frossie
You're right, the reaction to the TOS was something to behold.

I think due to the nature of hacking and hackers, most people here hate being told how to do their job, especially for what feels to them to be spurious or irrational reasons.

I suspect people would have responded better to a more narrow (though perhaps legally more problematic) "no Flash" rule, rather than the legally safer but over-broad "no cross-compiling".