Post #2121200
2026-02-20 08:16 UTC
Apple and Google arrive at enclosure differently thanks to their differing relationships to hardware ODMs, but the contours are similar: you, a developer, must pay a vig to them to get access to essential APIs, either on the front-end, or through a cut of revenue, and no permissionless innovation will be tolerated once it becomes big enough to catch the eye of the app store taxman.
Replies (1)
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@slightlyoff@toot.cafe 2026-02-20 08:16
In an earlier era, the web stood in opposition to this sort of enclosure. Open operating systems enabled browsers to go "over the top" of OS vendors and liberate essential system capabilities, re-standardizing capabilities that had their open, low-level representations overgrown in a thicket of proprietary OS goo. Browsers could create a tunnel of IP safety down to those essential features, standardising them, and making them interoperable. And it's interoperability that gatekeepers *hate*.