Joe Hewitt, developer of Facebook’s iPhone app, the Firefox browser, and Firebug development tool, recently quit developing the app because of Apple’s approval process:
Middle men exist to reduce the cost of getting a product from A to B, and as long as that cost is significant, they will be useful. However, the moment the middle man monopolizes the means of distribution, he becomes a gatekeeper, and creators can be made to fail not by the merits and popularity of their products, but by the whims and short-term interests of the gatekeeper.
In an interview with TechCrunch, he went on to say that his leaving was directly related to a philosophical, underlying belief, one which I share with them:
The web is still unrestricted and free, and so I am returning to my roots as a web developer. In the long term, I would like to be able to say that I helped to make the web the best mobile platform available, rather than being part of the transition to a world where every developer must go through a middleman to get their software in the hands of users.
Read Joe’s whole post “On Middle Men” »
Thanks for the hat tip, @glenbot.
From Inspiration, Quick Cuts
Leave a Reply