[Haskell-cafe] Re: [Haskell] Re: Work on Video Games in Haskell

[Benjamin L. Russell]

Edward Kmett <ekmett at gmail.com> writes:

> On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 5:22 PM, Pierre-Etienne Meunier <span dir="ltr"><mailto:pierreetienne.meunier at gmail.com></span> wrote:
> Well in this case I&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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&#39;t figure out what I&#39;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-the-elements-appebook/

[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-android.ars

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-the-elements-appebook/
>.

[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-android.ars>.

[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>.