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The tech industry is one of the most valuable sectors on the planet, but it ultimately rests on the unpaid labour of an alarmingly small amount of hobbyists.
That reliance is the blessing, and the curse, of open source software – coding projects put up on the internet for anyone to use, freely, in their own work. Some open source software solves simple problems elegantly enough that no one wants to redo the work unnecessarily; others tackle complex tasks that few have ever attempted.
the most consequential figures in the tech world are half guys like steve jobs and bill gates and half some guy named ronald who maintains a unix tool called ‘runk’ which stands for Ronald’s Universal Number Kounter and handles all math for every machine on earth
A project called tea.xyz promised people they could “get rewards for [their] open source contributions”, complete with a flashy website describing how it would “enhance the sustainability of open-source software”.
So far, it’s achieved the exact opposite. Promising to reward open source contributors with crypto tokens, the project asked users to verify their access to open source projects by merging in a YAML file containing their crypto wallet address.
The fine is nearly four times higher than expected in a move by the European Commission to show it will act decisively on tech companies who abuse their dominant position in the market for phones and online services.
The European competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, said a smaller fine would have been nothing more than the equivalent of “a parking fine” and was designed to act as “a deterrent” to such practices for Apple and others.
If a developer sells physical goods, serves ads in their app, or just shares an app for free, they don’t pay Apple anything.
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