You can support an approach and also believe someone is doing it stupidly, or even unethically, all without being contradictory.
For example, do you support the right of a newspaper editor to pick and choose which letters to the editor get published? How about a restaurant's reserved "right to refuse service to anyone"? If you do, you still reserve the right in each of these cases to object to individual decisions, and to refuse patronage if an individual decision or a pattern of decisions offends you. All without contradicting yourself.
But that's exactly the problem with the benevolent dictatorship model. Sooner or later this kind of absolute power is used unwisely or outright abused and you have no recourse.
This is why almost every country in the world has abandoned monarchy. It's ultimately too error-prone and inefficient.
Once upon a time (a few years ago), King Linus and his nobles weren't terribly happy with many of the technical decisions the Android team made. How did King Linus exercise his sovereignty? Did it stop the Android team from doing what they wanted?
You're missing the point. Linux would never have gotten to the point of being useful for Android if Linus Torvalds didn't have a benevolent dictatorship.
Anyway, if you are truly for freedom, support Apple's freedom to do things its way and Google's to do things its way. You can follow whichever one you want. Or did you want to dictate to me and millions of others that they can't choose a walled-garden such as Apple's if that's what we want?
You want to shove your preferred freedom down our throats?
You want to shove your preferred freedom down our throats?
Not at all. Make yourself right at home in your cozy walled garden. Just stop using bogus patent suits to drive the products I want to buy off the shelves and compete on features instead.
My point is that whatever you want to call the governance model of Linux it isn't anything like a (non-joking) dictatorship. A real dictator could and would have stopped the Android team from leaving (i.e. made them do things his way or not at all). Linus not only didn't stop them from leaving, he couldn't.
When the benevolence is built-in, it isn't a dictatorship, it's something else. And something else doesn't support your argument about walled gardens, it undermines it.
With an Android phone I can limit myself to what's available on Google Play or I can patronize any of the third-party app markets or I can manually side-load any app I want. If I don't like a particular vendor's form factor or UI customizations I have many alternatives. Those of us unafraid of a little variety call this choice, not anarchy.
And in a world where a lot of people access the internet only through a phone these decisions carry a lot more weight than your choice of shoes or your car.
The ideal walled garden would be one that blocks spammy apps and malware - but not information. I think it's reasonable to support walled gardens in principle but be critical of some aspects of the Apple implementation.
I really despise the usage of a "Slippery Slope" claim, but I think that this really embodies the idea.
We have enough problems as is with anti-malware software throwing false positives, so who is to say that Apple can do any better? Likewise, "spammy apps" and "malware" are terms subject to definitions given by the curator. If we use past history as any indicator, then it seems Apple has already proven that the company has it's own definitions for these terms.
The logical fallacy here is the assumption that the guidelines imposed by apple won't lead to straight up draconian rules, which they almost already have. There is a reason why utopias do not exist.
Jeez louis, who's making that logical fallacy? Don't put your interpretation into other people's mouths. The moment Apple crosses a line, I'll bail. But I disagree that it has. It's just a fucking phone, for Christ's sake. And you can still do this app as a web app.
It's a question of two imperfect approaches. Google's "open" Android market (it isn't quite totally open is it?) is far from utopia too, no? All that malware sucks for non-technical users. Why not allow users the choice between both approaches? Or shall we follow your "draconian rule" and disallow this choice?
You should get an actual (and logical) understanding of "logical fallacy" and then review your comments above. Sigh.
One point to make: I didn't give you any downmods, because I can't and refuse to do so.
Let me see if I can explain this in more detail. I'm not saying the android market is perfect, nor am I saying that the iOS market is an ideal solution. My point is that the original statement:
> The ideal walled garden would be one that blocks spammy apps and malware - but not information
is a logical fallacy. Information is a very broad term, so the assumption that an overlord curator can perform their job in a non-invasive manner while magically defining what "bad" means is a road to hell. What we need is effectively the reddit of app stores; one curated by the community instead of a black box of employees. The tyranny of the democratic majority is still an issue, but it seems that this is a far more fair solution than what exists now.
It is an effort in futility to find the perfect end all solution, because that utopia can't exist. I would, however, rather have the risk of getting coal instead of diamonds instead of just what a company tells me is a diamond.
There's a lot more at stake here than that. These kinds of devices are quickly becoming the primary or even the only means of accessing the internet for a lot of people.
Sure, in theory a well curated walled garden is the perfect solution. In practice, though, there will always be disagreements between what should and shouldn't be outside those walls. And this is just my opinion, but a walled garden run by a giant corporation will always be seriously flawed.
I'm sorry, but that's completely contradictory. The point of the wall is that it blocks things Apple don't approve of.