What the iPhone SDK means for open source

In a purely technical sense, news that Apple will offer an iPhone software development kit and allow third-party applications is not an open source story.

This is still a proprietary platform.

But with this move Jobs is admitting that the iPhone is a computer platform, thus subject to computer rules, and that is an important move.

It means the absolute device control AT&T and the other U.S. carriers have exercised must give way. It means that the iPhone is not a phone, and that’s what its competitors, such as the coming GPhone, will be as well.

So what we have is a tipping point, from mobile voice to mobile data. One that will change public attitudes. While people can accept “it’s the network” as an excuse for maintaining voice reliability, they know better when it comes to data.

They have the Internet, the “network of networks,” not (supposedly) under any one carrier’s control, offering fixed monthly service pricing, a comparative gob of bandwidth, with voice as just one of many low-bandwidth applications.

Read the whole article @ ZD Net

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