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donmcronald parent
I never got into it because I was convinced developers would refuse to give up control over distribution when Apple started doing it. I wish I was right, but here we are.

worldsayshi
Developers sometimes seem to be as in control as farmers are of the distribution of their produce. There's no absolute rule that gives the owners of large scale distribution networks power over both producer and consumer. It's just laws of convenience. It's easier for everyone to go through a few or just a single common broker.

There's no law against a more democratic way to implement the broker either but it requires interesting methods of coordination and/or decision making that doesn't seem to exist yet?

donmcronald OP
It limits choice. I don’t have any experience building mobile apps because I didn’t want to buy into an unfair ecosystem. That means fewer mobile apps even if distribution networks change tomorrow.
brailsafe
> I don’t have any experience building mobile apps because I didn’t want to buy into an unfair ecosystem

Seems like it wouldn't be much of a stretch to compare that statement to not starting a business because the economy is unfair. People indeed don't start businesses when the bureaucratic or tax overhead outweighs the financial benefit, but nobody loses sleep over an individual's hypothetical missed opportunity to learn a new skill but them. Doesn't matter to the platform owners unless it also stops being profitable, so it's their job to maintain the profitability for their ecosystem despite whatever barriers they put up.

BrenBarn
> There's no law against a more democratic way to implement the broker either but it requires interesting methods of coordination and/or decision making that doesn't seem to exist yet?

It's not enough to not have a law against it, we need to have and enforce laws requiring it.

worldsayshi
I'm not so sure that we can even rely on legislation for this. I think we need new ways or new technology for collective decision making that doesn't rely on a pre existing healthy legislative environment.
jeroenhd
Some developers did. Others, who didn't care so much, got into the app store instead, and got rich off it. Users didn't care about such principles and mobile-first has been a viable strategy for a long time now. Not having something of an app is a problem if you want to stay in many markets.
askafriend
Developers want a stable, secure platform where they can reach customers that trust the platform and are willing to transact. Everything is downstream of that, including any philosophy around control.

Developers are businesses and the economics need to work. For that, safety and security is much more important than openness.

Kim_Bruning
Oh! Classic Survivorship bias. You're only looking at the devs who went into business in the phone ecosystem in the first place. I'm thinking that they're there despite the barriers to entry ('shenanigans'), and the ones you encounter happen to be those who happen to place a higher value on 'other values'. As the ecosystem gets locked down more, this effect becomes stronger.

Meanwhile, you're not looking at those who left, or those who decided to never enter a broken market dominated by players convicted of monopolistic practices.

This seems much more intuitive than a hypothesis where somehow people would prefer to enter a closed market over a fair and open market with no barriers to entry.

Remember, monopolists succeed because they are distorting the market, not because they are in fact the most efficient competitor.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

saganus
Money is a powerful motivator. For better or worse.

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