Edward Kmett
On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 5:22 PM, Pierre-Etienne Meunier <span dir="ltr">mailto:pierreetienne.meunier@gmail.com</span> wrote: Well in this case I'd be really interested in seeing how the can tell the difference, be it only from a simple complexity theoretic point of view ! I understand they may look for common patterns in their compiler code to tell the difference between GHC's generated code and theirs, but pretending they can do it in this case only shows that Apple lawyers never communicate with the engineers. I think it is more a matter of Jobs trying to find any way he could to quickly block Adobe's attempted end-run around his blockade against Flash apps.While we can all acknowledge the technical impossibility of identifying the original source language of a piece of code, all they need is to raise the spectre of doubt, and they have practically gutted all concern of a cross platform development environment emerging, because no sound business plan can be built on "I hope my major and only possible distributor doesn't figure out what I'm doing!"
While it may be difficult to identify the original source language of an arbitrary piece of code, it is much simpler to identify Haskell as the original source language of a GHC-compiled piece of code for most pieces of code. There are a number of interesting discussions on this issue at the sites below: [1] Daring Fireball: "New iPhone Developer Agreement Bans the Use of Adobe's Flash-to-iPhone Compiler" http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/iphone_agreement_bans_flash_compiler [2] Hacker News | Getting away from the frenzied rhetoric, my opinion is that what Apple really wa... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1250946 [3] Knowing .NET » Blog Archive » "The Absurdity of Apple’s New iPhone Restrictions" http://www.knowing.net/index.php/2010/04/09/using-mathematica-to-generate-th... [4] "Why does everything suck?: Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad" http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/2010/04/steve-jobs-has-just-gone-mad.html [5] "Apple takes aim at Adobe... or Android?" http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/04/apple-takes-aim-at-adobe-or-androi... In addition, the following article sheds some light on the historical background for the initial Apple vs. Adobe schism: [6] "Rhapsody and blues" http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits/2008/04/rhapsody-and-blues.ars Curiously, in the original Apple Macintosh Superbowl commercial (see http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-715862862672743260#), Apple (then "Apple Computer") proclaimed the following:
On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like "1984."
George Orwell's novel, _1984_, was essentially about freedom of expression (among a number of other freedoms). Ironically, by prohibiting freedom of expression in the choice of a programming language for the iPhone and requiring that all applications be "originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS Webkit engine," Apple has now become the epitome of the very thing it had originally set out *not* to be. -- Benjamin L. Russell [1] Gruber, John. "New iPhone Developer Agreement Bans the Use of Adobe’s Flash-to-iPhone Compiler." n.p. 8 Apr. 2010. Web. 29 May 2010. http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/iphone_agreement_bans_flash_compiler. [2] raganwald. n.t. _Hacker News._ Y Combinator. 9 Apr. 2010. Web. 29 May 2010. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1250946. [3] O'Brien, Larry. "The Absurdity of Apple’s New iPhone Restrictions." _Knowing .NET._ n.p. 9 Apr. 2010. Web. 29 May 2010. <http://www.knowing.net/index.php/2010/04/09/using-mathematica-to-generate-th...
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[4] Williams, Hank. "Steve Jobs Has Just Gone Mad." _Why does everything suck?: Exploring the tech marketplace from 10,000 feet._ n.p. 8 Apr. 2010. Web. 29 May 2010. http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/2010/04/steve-jobs-has-just-gone-mad.html. [5] Bright, Peter. "Apple takes aim at Adobe... or Android?" _Ars Technica._ Condé Nast Digital. Apr. 2010. Web. 29 May 2010. http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/04/apple-takes-aim-at-adobe-or-androi.... [6] Siracusa, John. "Rhapsody and blues." _Ars Technica._ Condé Nast Digital. 3 Apr. 2008. Web. 29 May 2010. http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits/2008/04/rhapsody-and-blues.ars.