14 DAY TRIAL // The Free Software Foundation has released a very harsh statement in which users are advised to stay away from any Apple products, mostly because of the closed nature of the platform.
The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit organization that promotes the adoption of completely free software and hardware. For example, it recommends the user distributions that don't have any kind of proprietary software installed by default or in the repositories, and it does the same for various pieces of hardware, like laptops.
As you can imagine, after the announcement for the new iPhone, Apple Pay, and Apple Watch, the Free Software Foundation didn't stay too quiet. This is not the first time the organization talks about other systems than Linux. The foundation also encourages users to stay away from Windows products, pretty much for the same reasons.
Why is the Free Software Foundation against the use of Apple products?
The FSF Executive Director, John Sullivan, has made a very harsh statement regarding Apple, and one of the main reasons cited by him is the fact that the Cupertino-based company is always using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to threaten people who are trying to do different things to their products, like installing third-party software.
John Sullivan is also pretty angry at the media because it doesn't punish Apple or even mention all the egregious things that they are doing all the time, like trying to prosecute people who meddle with the products.
Last but not least, Apple has a closed framework that is stifling innovation and that is responsible for stopping people building devices that even come close to their own products.
"Every review that does not mention Apple's insistence on using Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) to lock down the devices and applications they sell is doing an extreme disservice to readers, and is a blow to the development of the free digital society we actually need. Any review that discusses technical specs without first exposing the unethical framework that produced those products, is helping usher people down a path that ends in complete digital disempowerment."
"But it's not enough to just say "Don't buy their products." The laws Apple and others use to enforce their digital restrictions, giving them a subsidized competitive advantage over products that respect user freedom, must be repealed. At least the watch did end up having a clasp so you can remove it -- we were worried," ends John Sullivan.
It's very unlikely that anyone at Apple is worried about what the Free Software Foundation says publicly, but it's good to know that there are people out there who openly oppose any kind of behavior that acts as a threat to free software.