RMS on the "Jailer" steve jobs

RMS wrote on his personal blog thus "Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.

As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." Nobody deserves to have to die - not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing.

Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence. We can only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less effective."

Now, Let us study what the hue and cry is about this posting.

The first sentence

Is just perfect. It just sums up jobs's entire lifetime of work. "Jail made cool" tells us about the way steve used the fantastic engineers at work in his company. I believe the engineers were first making a product with a positive outing. But later or along during its development the marketing genius put his stamp on all the products, by locking out the users and spreading "individualism" among the "status" friendly computing newbies. He made it such a way that a person who knew nothing about computing would look cool with his device. In fact he "told" people what is cool. After all this I heard RMS was anti-social. LOL

"I am glad he's gone" tells too many things. The same line would be apt if steve had completely retired from his influence on the way computing devices are designed. But that, was never going to happen. Because the brand which apple had built over the years was not "apple" but "Jobs". In fact, this is the right time for RMS to be harsh on him. This would definitely bring about the truth about the marketing genius. I for one, am sure that this conversations b/w "fools who dont know what is freedom" and people who live and swear by freedom. People buy jailed devices if they themselves like to stay in a prison designed by picassa and of course marketed by steve.

"But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing"

I think there is no need to elaborate on this statement. Anybody requiring clarification can head to www.gnu.org and www.fsf.org or use any of the GNU/Linux distros to "feel" it.

So, There is nothing wrong in RMS's post. He is completely sane and the post is carefully worded. As for the last sentence can Apple change the way ios5 will be distributed. Will it be under GNU GPL v3 or at a minimal, any "open source" license(That, would not be acceptable to RMS but .... let it start here). Naa ....................

steve jobs and Marketing of FLOSS products

Before I comment anything on steve jobs, I salute the marketing genius of a man who would be a perfect example in majority of the examples in philip kotler's book. If he is not he will be in the next edition.

So, what did steve jobs do to make front page of a leading Indian newspaper? He cared a damn about India, why? He never thought India as a lucrative "Market". 1 billion people and counting, is it not a market ..... This, is the only mistake I could recognise made by this marketing genius.

So, what did steve jobs do to make front page of a leading Indian newspaper? Sorry, that is monotonous, let us do it with bullets.

1. Did he have anything to do, technically with the first apple(1976), No. He arranged funding and handled the marketing part of it.
2. Did Apple II have any inputs from jobs, No. Again, only "Marketing"
3. Lisa, Macintosh ..... Marketing
4. NeXT ..... Marketing
5. iMac .... Marketing
6. By this time, Apple recognised that jobs had himself become a commodity. They sold jobs to the bedazzled audience and they lapped him up completely.
7. iPod ..... Marketing. There were a plethora of mp3 players in the market but, the marketing blitz assured that they all were dead within a matter of days.
8. iTunes ..... The greatest innovation which took Apple's revenues to the highest. This was the beginning of the lockdown of the devices in terms of software. This introduced the concept of "ownership" or DRM. You are not supposed to share the music u buy, or for that matter anything u buy from the itunes market. That is again "marketing"

9. iphone .... Revolutionised the mobile phone market. oh, that market word again. He showed that users are ready for premium hardware which dumb users would like to use it blindly and flaunt it too.

10. ipad ... Tapped the same dumb phone market and gave it one more premium symbol to show off.

The one thing common to the latest devices on the market.... is FLOSS. All the devices run FLOSS core. The core runs freebsd on a MACH kernel. Both developed over generations by FLOSS enthusiasts. The bindings are propreitory. The extensions in terms of apps(the itunes app market) are propreitory. Though, the hardware/software combo is ready to run FLOSS apps, I have come across very few people who go beyond what is available in the bundle, except for *nix enthusiasts who "open" the system to be their dream machine. With this they have something to flaunt as well as be working on their favorite *nix aspects. That just shows why apple devices turn up in huge numbers in majority of FLOSS programs/presentations.

In reality he has jailed the users and the FLOSS core in propreitory casing(propreitory UI). Sheer marketing genius. This will be perfect for people who really dont care about the central human principle, sharing. Or they just dont have anything to share.

kudos to the marketing genius for running such a long marathon, always in the lead. For me, steve jobs is "the" tech marketing guru.