Open Letter to Steve Jobs
update 16:00: Steve Jobs answers to my open letter, see below.
Dear Steve Jobs,
Having read your Thoughts on Flash, I could not agree with you more. Flash is not the Web, and I am glad Apple seizes the opportunity of open standards to build better products for their customers.
But I am not so sure about your definition of the word Open in general. I will not argue here that it is ironic you find the Apple Store more open than Flash. I will not complain either that you like Openness so much that when you use “Open Source” Software to build your Mac operating system, you keep all the openness for yourself and don’t give it to your customers, nor to the developers whose works have been very useful to you.
I figured that writing an open letter was an appropriate way to remind you of a couple of things that you may have forgotten — maybe in good faith — about open standards.
It is true that HTML5 is an emerging open standard, and I am glad that you adopted it (well, did you really have the choice anyway?). However I have to say I am impressed in the way you succeed in saying how Apple has been doing great with open standards against Flash… while explaining Flash videos is not a problem, because Apple has implemented another video codec: H.264.
May I remind you that H.264 is not an open standard? This video codec is covered by patents, and “vendors and commercial users of products which make use of H.264/AVC are expected to pay patent licensing royalties for the patented technology” (ref). This is why Mozilla Firefox and Opera have not adopted this video codec for their HTML5 implementation, and decided to chose Theora as a sustainable and open alternative.
Free Software Foundation Europe have been raising consensus and awareness on Open Standards for some years already. I am sure we would be happy to help Apple make the good decision. So, to begin with, here is the definition:
An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is
- subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a manner equally available to all parties;
- without any components or extensions that have dependencies on formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open Standard themselves;
- free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by any party or in any business model;
- managed and further developed independently of any single vendor in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third parties;
- available in multiple complete implementations by competing vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all parties.
Hugo Roy
April 2010
Steve Jobs’ email (with sources)
From: Steve Jobs
To: Hugo Roy
Subject: Re:Open letter to Steve Jobs: Thoughts on Flash
Date 30/04/2010 15:21:17All video codecs are covered by patents. A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other “open source” codecs now. Unfortunately, just because something is open source, it doesn’t mean or guarantee that it doesn’t infringe on others patents. An open standard is different from being royalty free or open source.
Sent from my iPad
Since it was an open letter, I think I have the right to publish his answer.
Let's talk about Free Software and its effects in society at large!
@Quelque Chose It seems as if you haven’t been reading any recent news on Apple. If you had, you would know Apple has been using a very personal method in responding to recent events, where Jobs (or at the very least we can assume a company employee he is dictating to) has been emailing his “attackers” directly.
PS no one likes a troll.
ITU H.264/MPEG AVC is an open standard: You can buy the specification from ISO an implement it. That’s all you need for being an open standard. Please do not confuse this fact with being “not patented”: All audio/video standards are currently encumbered by patents. Neither Vorbis nor Theora is not infringing other companies intellectual properties. They were simply not commercially successful enough to get a closer examination by an US court…
Answer by Hugo: How is ITU relevant for software? It’s not. And I am sure ISO is very credible for defining open standards (see the OOXML fiasco).
P.S. You fail to even implement such simple things as correct certificates…
If you try to shut down the flow of ideas or information with LAW suits, it will work for a short time, but people who desire to be free will always come up with better “FREE” unencumbered ideas any your closed ideas will go the way of the GIF file standard!
SJ: “An open standard is different from being royalty free or open source.”
How is different from what Andy Rubin (Google VP of Engineering, Android) told in the Adobe blog http://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2010/04/adobe_air_on_the_android_platf.html
Andy Rubin: being open “means not being militant about the things consumers are actually enjoying.” regarding Flash, and flash format is actually open, and anyone can build a flash player.
Correction of link from previous post.
SJ: “An open standard is different from being royalty free or open source.”
How is different from what Andy Rubin (Google VP of Engineering, Android) told Newyork times interview http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/googles-andy-rubin-on-everything-android/
Andy Rubin: being open “means not being militant about the things consumers are actually enjoying.” regarding Flash, and flash format is actually open, and anyone can build a flash player.
Jobs, you are not hero any more. You are a villain from now.
[...] fsfe.org via Microsoft blogs, [...]
I’m not sure how anyone can take the criticism of Jobs vs. Adobe, criticising Adobe for not being “open”, with any seriousness. Should the CEO of Sony start talking about how other companies are not doing enough to loosen the restrictions of DRM the way SONY is? When has Apple done anything to actually make content cheap and/or free? When? Content providers love Apple because Apple makes things proprietary and then charges a premium. Is tech journalism completely naive about these things, or are they bound by contract to just blindly follow wherever Apple Co. chooses leads the media?
Answer by hugo The criticism is that Steve Jobs claims to be open, which is not true. That’s all.
I might just not get this but I think the point here is that Flash relies on a plug-in completely controlled by Adobe to work.
On the other hand H264 or Theora don’t need third party applications to be played by users.
More practically, if Adobe goes bankrupt the websites using Flash will be screwed but the ones using HTML5 and whatever video codec they like will survive no matter what, in fact they will continue to do well even if Apple goes bankrupt.
“I will not complain either that you like Openness so much that when you use “Open Source” Software to build your Mac operating system, you keep all the openness for yourself and don’t give it to your customers, nor to the developers whose works have been very useful to you.”
That’s just not true Apple has enhanced many open source project. For example WebKit (the most famous I think), gcc or llvm just to mention a few.
I will not complain either that you like Openness so much that when you use “Open Source” Software to build your Mac operating system, you keep all the openness for yourself and don’t give it to your customers, nor to the developers whose works have been very useful to you.
This is actually pretty false. Apple’s actually rigorously releasing sources of many of its operating system’s components:
http://www.opensource.apple.com/release/mac-os-x-1063/
Compared to miserable track record of some “real” open software players (such as Ubuntu) this is a biggie. And compared to what companies like Oracle are doing this is almost a miracle. Apple is now the only F500 company actually doing something for the community - not just biting on it as it pleases.
By now everyone in the software industry contributes to Free and Open Source Software in some way. Latest example: Microsoft contributes to Joomla project (and this is by far not the first thing Microsoft does) At the same time, IBM brings patents into position against the free Hercules mainframe emulator. So it’s not all black-and-white in terms of how companies position themselves vis-a-vis FOSS. Mega patent holders are a big problem and ultimately they’ll just do the math and decide where it’s most profitable to use patents against FOSS. It’s sad but true.
All audio/video standards are currently encumbered by patents.
And Linux infringes on 235 M$ patents.
Jesus Christ, Steve replied to you personally? You are a celebrity now. May I have your authograph? Please!
[...] fsfe.org around Microsoft blogs, [...]
SJ is correct. There isn’t a video codec out there which isn’t encumbered by patents, hell there is virtually no space anywhere which isn’t encumbered by patents anymore. You would be naive to think that just because you can write software and share it with your pals that it is “open” by your definition. Open the source may be but it is meaningless if it violates patents which demand royalties be paid, and especially in the case of video, they must.
OGG will be terminated and you’ll be left with no choice but to pay for a licensed video codec for your open source browser if you want to watch video with it (pick your flavor, it’s all vanilla). Commercial browsers will come license paid as they are now.
What Erik writes may indeed be how things ultimately evolve (no free codec, due to the relevant patent thicket). But Hugo didn’t challenge Steve Jobs on the accuracy of any such prediction. The question is whether Apple can credibly be a self-proclaimed advocate of openness. Apple is probably the most closed-technology company in the entire industry, and some others such as IBM only want openness in markets where it benefits them and/or hurts competitors while strictly opposing interoperability, including the use of patents against FOSS, where they want to protect a lucrative turf.
knb, Yes Vorbis is used everywhere commercially and very successful. Besides game engines such as Unreal Engine, id Tech engine games, Unity which builds a large number of iPhone games and etc, also commercial services such as one I use regularly - Spotify uses Vorbis, there is Vorbis support in Android phones etc. Especially commercial game engines is all about intellectual property.
Erik, please everybody knows Ogg Theora uses patents, it’s still unencumbered by them as they have been given the rights to use the intellectual property which On2 donated. They didn’t just drop source code. OGG itself is just a container. Theora don’t infringe on any AVC/H.264 patents. It precedes it. It’s not a copy and it’s exactly not the infringing ffmpeg implementations of unlicensed codecs they want to use.
Open standards by FSF’s definition has nothing to do with open source. Your free to close the source of Theora, improve it, create your own version etc.
Don’t put everything in the same bag.
Opera releases commercial browsers and as it stands won’t support H.264. Mozilla should be regarded as a commercial player too. Nobody is going after Theora. Unspecified FUD is unspecified FUD. Terminate your FUD instead. Separating the issues aren’t hard.
Nils, even NeXT did that. This is just an example of open source with a much better standing, quality and being better then the commercial players which mostly has been bankrupt or made unimportant. Writing compilers by yourself is hard. Which is why much of it is done in academic environments same as much of the software. If they where to hinder such projects by patents hundreds of millions of devices a year would be unhappy. Discouraging the academic community benefits nobody. Jobs shouldn’t do it here (video) either. Theora and patent unencumbered should be clearly separated from any other effort of implementing encumbered standards. Most core technologies in OS X is from an academic effort (BSD, Mach etc) or even reverse engineering proprietary technology such as Samba (SMB/CIFS).
Ed Bott, a ZDNet blogger, says the FSF’s position on this subject is “FUD”. It would be great if you, Hugo, or another FSFE activist could comment on Ed Bott’s analysis.
[...] gesehen, zu den Streitereien zwischen Apple und Adobe um Flash selbst und in aller Ausf
Talk about napping at the back of the classroom! You’re only telling this to a bunch of people who do Free Software, which is all about licensing your own work while retaining the copyright, contrary to the myths propagated by apologists and lobbyists for proprietary software.
And Free Software, along with the rise of the Web, has exposed the notion of an “open standard” to a great deal more scrutiny than it had in previous decades. Back in the 1980s it may have been acceptable for one corporation to claim “openness” if it lets another corporation use its technology under some kind of mutual agreement - witness stuff like OpenLook and Motif - but as genuinely open software solutions have become widely available, people have come to demand similarly open standards, genuinely open and implementable by anyone without hindrance (and, as Mike notes, without even having to ask if you’re allowed to). And such standards have been delivered by organisations like the World Wide Web Consortium.
Now that the landscape has changed, it is dishonest to pitch “RAND” licensing, usually as part of the operation of a patent cartel, as some kind of criteria or prerequisite for an “open” standard. Indeed, particularly with the assertion of patents, “RAND” licensing is yet another tool to lock Free Software out of competitive situations when such software - genuinely open software - is seen as a competitive threat.
Free Software demands real open standards so that those standards and genuine competition can be transparently upheld. In contrast, people and organisations who push patent-encumbered technologies into public standards seem to have some serious problems with things like competition and transparency.
[...] Open Letter to Steve Jobs Share update 16:00: Steve Jobs answers to my open letter, see below. [...]
I think the litmus test is this: if I implement code holding to some standard, can I legally distribute that code to someone who can in turn distribute that code to someone else without having to re-license the original standard?
If that code cannot be infinitely legally shared with anyone and everyone regardless of purpose, the standard used shouldn’t be considered “open”.
Steve Jobs is deuchebaggery. I’d “open”ly pop him in the jaw to shut him the fu for a couple days. Anyone supporting SJ position on this or anything even remotely involving openness = FANBOY, get a life.
Smartphones have a really small generation lifecycle….bring on Android.
Duh?!
Who among the people here is living in a Communist or Socialist State?
“Laissez-faire” or “let it be” and let the world go round by itself. That is the guiding principle of any Democratic Capitalist state. I am not exactly inferring that it is BAD. There can never be a PERFECT SYSTEM born out of the creation of any IMPERFECT being! Whether it be in POLITICS, ECONOMICS, or TECHNICAL STANDARDS, or the interplay of any of those mentioned.
To borrow the line of a scientist whom I forgot the name (my apology), “The BEAUTY of STANDARDS, is that there are a LOT to choose from.”
Any company growing in size and market domination, and relative to the position they take inherent to their BUSINESS MODEL, will definitely be PROTECTIVE of the Intellectual Property Rights(IPR). Moreover, these companies will have a lot of double-speak, especially in the senior executive levels. Thus, don’t boggle your minds arguing the nomenclature and definition of “open standard” viz-a-vis “open source” because the ULTIMATE INTENT of each camp are pretty much DISJOINT. It is akin to drawing TWO PARALLEL LINES, they would seem to meet at the HORIZON. But it is ONLY true when you are OBSERVING the lines from afar! This is NOT only true in the ICT industries. Try to observe petroleum companies, and what they muster in terms of PR for their quest for ALTERNATIVE ENERGY RESOURCES while at THE SAME TIME messing-up with the ENVIRONMENT. This industry has been pretty much older than ICT. Moguls, tycoons, scientists, engineers, politicians, and state policy makers, live and die. But the Nature of Man and the Philosophy of His Life hardly changed over time.
Charles Darwin’s concept of “survival” will give anyone a far greater insight of how such biological concepts are deeply-entrenched in the corporate world, even as if the companies themselves will NEVER admit them. PROFIT is the LIFE BLOOD of every business there is! If you are NOT making PROFIT, you don’t call that BUSINESS, it is called CHARITY or FOUNDATION! Oh, before I forget, every BIG CORPORATIONS has created their our FOUNDATION - another example of ‘double-speak!’
Try to become like Steve Jobs, a CEO of Apple Inc., a publicly-traded company. And then, when you get to be in front of the Stockholder’s Meeting discussing last year’s financial report, you begin by saying:
“This is AMAZING, our products sell like HOT CAKES. But our EPS is virtually nil, and you people who have invested millions of dollars will never get a dime of dividends for how many years. This is so because a Sino-Hindu tech giant has created a better version than our iPad. We cannot sue them for IPR infringement. But just the same, we are very gratified for your continued confidence and reliance over how I effectively managed this company, enabling our employees to reach productive and creative heights not only seen in our products but also replicated by other companies for the benefit of ALL HUMANITY!”
If there is ONE COMPANY right NOW, which does NOT directly MAKE PROFIT from its PRODUCE (PRODUCTS or SERVICES), it is GOOGLE! Google is able to do just that because it has a very UNCONVENTIONAL BUSINESS MODEL, not many COMPANIES could DUPLICATE. Most of its PRODUCTS or SERVICES are just VEHICLE through which USERS get the FREE RIDE, in exchange to surrendering some INFORMATION of YOU and be BLASTED with an ARRAY of INFORMATION. There is NO PROBLEM with that for as long as you WILLINGLY INTENDED to do the same, and the SETUP (i.e. DISCLOSURE) is NOT MADE as a DEFAULT in any SYSTEM, lest legal encroachment to PRIVACY INFRINGEMENT is at hand.
CHOICE is a PRICELESS POSSESSION in all of DEMOCRATIC WORLDS!
To ALL the PEOPLE who cried foul over Apple’s bullying and bias view against Adobe or or Ogg or Theora, let this be a CALL beyond MERE PETITION or PLEA, but for ACTION TO BOYCOTT their PRODUCTS!
The harsh fact to admit is that PEOPLE WHO are COMPLAINING of APPLE’s BULLYING moves are THE SAME PEOPLE that REALLY LOVE APPLE Products/Services. They have the sulked spirit because their “LOVE” is NOT acting CONGRUENT to their EXPECTATIONS. How sad!
But Life is a Choice! And all the more when it comes to products or services!
Remember that an ACTION can “kick a thousand asses” than WORDS will ever will.
Google supports both sides of the Camp! So Anyone can download Google’s Chrome. And there is Android! And there Ubuntu! and countless of free software…
If you are insisting of buying and iPhone or an iPad for whatever heck of a reason, even as IF YOU ALREADY KNOW SO OPENLY the STAND of the COMPANY over these ISSUES, then you are GLADLY SUBMITTING yourself to the RESTRICTIVE CHOICES you can MAKE. So, please don’t whine like a kid! It is a fault of your own making!
@lex_teQnika
If I’m understanding you right, you are basically advocating laissez faire capitalism. However, you are also supporting of software patents and ‘intellectual property’ in general, which is the central issue here. However, patents and copyright are very much not laissez faire. They are limited, government backed monopolies on abstract concepts. The laissez faire approach would be to dominate by producing a better product, not by having a legal team pursue overly broad patents.
Yes, for-profit corporations are driven by profit, but they also need to maintain an image and a relationship with the public. In Steve Job’s open letter, he criticized Adobe because they harm the open web. Hugo replies by saying that Apple’s choice of H.264 harms the open web as well.
As for loving Apple products but being disappointed by Apple, I don’t think that is inherently true. You can care about what Apple does without caring about Apple. They are a large player in certain markets, and what they do affects consumers and competitors.
lex_teQnika, most of us here live in representative liberal democracies. Most of us live in democracies considered free by US organizations like freedom house.
Lassiez-faire is not a way of governance, it’s just something that have influenced economic policy, I think you more likely mean a night-watcher state if you want be be left alone almost altogether. On one hand it’s not far off what socialist ideology or anarchists ultimately want, but it’s just as much of a crazy ideology as sovjet-communism and is a utopia. But. That’s an neoliberal idea. It’s something no country has ever been or been close to achieving.
Many off us live in democracies considered extensively more free-er then the united states. Even though we have universal health care, public schools, local governments etc and just as you a mixed economy.
So don’t be offensive. Ranting and screaming on top of that might not help. In many ways to add US is a bad market economy and in many senses works worse then old east european former communist states. A market needs regulation (rules) and an informed consumer. It’s rules that is markets. Rules doesn’t mean it’s a commando economy (like Soviet Union and many of it’s allies was). US had price-fixing/control not long ago though, also pretty high taxes in the past (about the same as my country at that time - though much higher marginal taxes then my country). Also patents applied to software is not the same thing as protecting your products, nobody argues that you should be able to infringe on trademarks or counterfeit products. In fact even Mozilla protects their trademarks. Patents are used to make money on patents. Also if products keep changing (thanks to firmware/software updates) it can be hard to make an informed choice, as you can’t be informed about the future. Something thats the best choice today might not be it tomorrow, but then your already stuck with the product. However people have a right to complain and express their views. Things aren’t perfect no matter what you choose. How would the market pick up on it otherwise. It’s supply and demand, they need to look at the demand side too. Whatever producing consumer products have to do with this open letter…. Consumers see the videos no matter what format it is, this is a technical and business issue not a consumer one for them. Consumers only demand the features. Markets are more then just consumers and producers though.
You are right, Hugo. No matter how much PR effort they put behind all this campaign. If something starts as a proprietary software that produces royalties for you, it is obvious to perceive your economic interests.
And, on the other hand, I’d rather pick something that is currently open source (and that really starts like open source, like Theora) rather than something which now is patented, demands money for several usages, and could demand even more money in the future (Apple’s H.264).
And the chain of interests just goes on. These infographics about Apple, Adobe and video codecs helps to understand the big picture: a high success of Apple, and a clear movement towards non-open-source approaches.
If On2’s OGG really does pre-date H.264 in any meaningful sense, then could it have been argued in court that H.264 violates patents once held by On2?
Joe wrote..
‘And Linux infringes on 235 M$ patents.’
Would you care to enlighten us as to which patents these are that Linux infringes on, because Microsoft can’t seem to.
Honestly I could care less about the technology and p****** contest going on between Adobe and Apple right now. However, as a consumer I will say this, Apple is screwing up something very important right now - that is when I buy a product I expect to be able to do with it what I want. I bought it, it is mine, it is my choice what I do with it.
Regardless of the merits of Flash vs. H.264, the fact remains there is a lot of Flash out there right now, and will be in the future, Afobe is not going to just lie down and let it die. That being said, Apple’s arrogance in not supporting it is just plain stupid in the eyes of a consumer who just wants to surf the web and expects things on an iPad to work like a computer.
Unfortunately, the current behaviors are all to remeniscent of Jobs first tenure with Apple. He wants to control everything and this is what led to their decline the first time.
Regardless, as a consumer, the iPad doesn’t support Flash while much of the web has it. Since I would use an iPad primarily for web surfing, it means it isn’t equipped to handle my PERSONAL needs - I could give two bits about Apple’s needs. That said, as I consumer I am a lot more cautious about Apple products now and I can tell you a few iPads Jobs won’t be selling because of this.
Steve. Dude.
This is a bad idea thats coming from bad lawyers not smart apple tech geeks.
Please. Some of us mac nuts still like to think your a “good guy” in the scheme of things and this just don’t feel right, and in fact it isnt.
Apple is very capable of winning a war of ideas because it has smart people and creativity.
But don’t confuse a war OF ideas for a war AGAINST ideas. That does nobody no good at all.
Its always been competition that motivates apple to make better stuff for us all to use. Being the underdog made apple lean, cunning and smart, it made apple make more beautiful computers with a more beautiful operating system. It made apple remain lazer focused on user experience and continue to come up with amazing new toys that microsoft or the handset makers never could have envisioned.
But using overly broad patents against obvious ideas is lazy and anti-competitive. From a user perspective, it feels like the greys are winning over the rainbows.
And a lazy apple is an apple that has lost its edge. We don’t want that , and apple should not want that.
Please reconsider. Share that patent so it becomes a real standard and freedom loving folks will embrace it, hoard it and you’ll just sour the faith techies have in you guys.
- A waveringly loyal ObjC developer.
LOL keep digging that hole Steve.. not long now till you hit China!