4 ms·

Of course they can't collect ”commission” on payments they're not involved with. The entire point of the Act is to crack down on anticompetitive behaviour. Your

by orra 3y ago

Of course they can't collect ”commission” on payments they're not involved with. The entire point of the Act is to crack down on anticompetitive behaviour. Your example is textbook, and I am certain the text of the law bans it.

threeseed 3y ago
Apple can absolutely collect their 15-30% commission. You are using their developer tools and SDKs and like other tooling e.g. game engines they can recoup this cost through a per-sale model.
- zamadatix 3y ago
  I think it's more a matter of "is there a way that complies with the wording and intent of the DMA" than "is there a way to separate the commission from the App Store app itself". Even then, if it's not what the regulators intend it wouldn't be allowed to stand. This isn't a case of breaking some ancient law or technicality and needing to shore up, it's a brand new law with the intent of stopping this kind of practice hindering markets. They tried similar minded tactics already with the Dutch complaints already and they weren't blindly accepted.
  - threeseed 3y ago
    Wording and intent of the DMA makes no reference to commissions. And there is nothing anti-competitive about Apple charging for their developer kit.
    - mdhb 3y ago
      Is there a reason why you’re speaking with such certainty? Are you a lawyer specialising in the topic? Do you actually know anything about this or is this just your opinion presented as fact?
      - orra 3y ago
        The law is called “Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 of the European Parliament and of the Council on contestable and fair markets in the digital sector”. It's not an outrageous conclusion that the law bans blatantly unfair practices, when that's what it sets out to do.
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      I'm not sure even Apple wants to be flippant about EU regulation. "See this one neat legal flaw that EU regulators hate!" isn't an approach a US$350B-revenue-company wants to take, with a regulator who's already signalled their intent.
    - micwag 3y ago
      Apple probably will be able to continue to charge 99$/year for their developer kit.
    - zamadatix 3y ago
      It doesn't need to explicitly mention commissions, law is not an ACL. The regulators and DMA just need to consider that it qualifies as e.g. gatekeeping, which is centrally referenced. Even if it can't be defined as a required action of gatekeeping today the DMA allows for the commission to quickly update that to qualify and require action by Apple. If, by some miracle, the regulators truly made a law which doesn't allow them to regulate the anti-competitiveness they intended too and they are truly beat by some gotcha this time then Apple has only bought a delay not an exception. $99/year for the development kit will probably be seen as reasonable enough for it to be allowed, though they may have to accept allowing 3rd party alternative solutions to publish things to these other app stores or similar. The fixed price of the development kit isn't really the point when talking about the 30% commission though. That's about revenue from consumer purchases and trying to evade that via moving the pricing to the dev kit wholly then requiring the dev kit will not fly just because the DMA doesn't explicitly reference doing that being an example of a bad gatekeeping action.
      - gruez 3y ago
        >The regulators and DMA just need to consider that it qualifies as e.g. gatekeeping, which is centrally referenced. Even if it can't be defined as a required action of gatekeeping today the DMA allows for the commission to quickly update that to qualify and require action by Apple. If, by some miracle, the regulators truly made a law which doesn't allow them to regulate the anti-competitiveness they intended too and they are truly beat by some gotcha this time then Apple has only bought a delay not an exception. Is charging a royalty for using the iOS SDK "gatekeeping"? I don't see why that's the case. Is Epic Games "gatekeeping" Unreal Engine by demanding 5% royalty to use their engine? Why should it be any different for Apple to demand royalty for using their SDK? Even if EU magically made a law that explicitly banned royalties for operating system SDKs, that won't be the end of the story. Such measures could be construed as anti-free trade (given how it disproportionately affects US companies compared to EU companies), and will probably lead to a trade war and/or WTO arbitration between the EU and the US.
        zamadatix 3y ago
        If they kept it to something like 5% and don't try to stop alternatives when used with other stores then it's probably not something that'd cause problems. The same is true for any sane pricing of external API integrations regardless of source as charging for push notifications or similar is fine by itself too. Where they'd get into trouble is by trying to turn these things into ways to move the 30% revenue cut. Just moving the 30% revenue from "rights to be on the one and only store" to "rights to write apps against the device with the one and only SDK" is quite clearly a different motive and forced cost model than having a 5% SDK fee where the developer is free to choose a different SDK. I.e. "but others charge for an SDK" doesn't allow you to then change your SDK cost model to exactly match what was deemed illegally anticompetitive forced market pricing. It just allows you to charge for your SDK in a competitive way, nothing more.
    - blueelephanttea 3y ago
      > And there is nothing anti-competitive about Apple charging for their developer kit. Not only that but a bunch of iOS apis incur services costs on Apple's side. Certainly seems valid that they should be able to charge to provide push notifications, iCloud storage, etc. There is a wide industry of businesses monetizing development kit usage and/or enterprise services. Nothing in the EU's regulations should preclude Apple from monetizing their investment into the iOS development platform.
- dylan604 3y ago
  isn't that what the $99/year fee is for? the commission from app sales was for the service provided via the store
- abhibeckert 3y ago
  Who says I'm using their tools? I might build my app using Electron or GTK. I don't think Apple can have a requirement to use their proprietary tools. That would be anti-competitive. If they want to make money off the tools... they should just charge a fee to buy the tools.
  - fingerlocks 3y ago
    The regulation doesn’t allow you to mmap w^x willy-nilly, the hardening and sandbox are still enforced by the OS.
    - thejsa 3y ago
      > The regulation doesn’t allow you to mmap w^x willy-nilly Yesn’t; I don’t think the regulators would look kindly upon Apple restricting third-party JITs, since it’d give Safari/WebKit an unfair competitive advantage over other browser engines on iOS (something I believe the DMA is also meant to open up.)
    - apocalyptic0n3 3y ago
      Third party payments have always been possible to implement in iOS apps; I've done it myself. What happens, however, is Apple rejects your app during the review process if the payment is for something they deem should be an in-app purchase or subscription (physical purchases are fine). Without that review process, you don't have to use Apple's payment process and can use Stripe or Braintree or whatever you want, and bypass Apple's 15-30% commission.
      - fingerlocks 3y ago
        I think you responded to the wrong person. I was talking about the restrictions against mapping pages of memory as executable
- m463 3y ago
  Developing with non-apple toolchains would be a big win. It would be interesting to see if people can replace parts of ios (sort of like grapheneos cuts out google)

by orra 3y ago

threeseed 3y ago

Apple can absolutely collect their 15-30% commission. You are using their developer tools and SDKs and like other tooling e.g. game engines they can recoup this cost through a per-sale model.

zamadatix 3y ago
I think it's more a matter of "is there a way that complies with the wording and intent of the DMA" than "is there a way to separate the commission from the App Store app itself". Even then, if it's not what the regulators intend it wouldn't be allowed to stand. This isn't a case of breaking some ancient law or technicality and needing to shore up, it's a brand new law with the intent of stopping this kind of practice hindering markets. They tried similar minded tactics already with the Dutch complaints already and they weren't blindly accepted.
- threeseed 3y ago
  Wording and intent of the DMA makes no reference to commissions. And there is nothing anti-competitive about Apple charging for their developer kit.
  - mdhb 3y ago
    Is there a reason why you’re speaking with such certainty? Are you a lawyer specialising in the topic? Do you actually know anything about this or is this just your opinion presented as fact?
    - orra 3y ago
      The law is called “Regulation (EU) 2022/1925 of the European Parliament and of the Council on contestable and fair markets in the digital sector”. It's not an outrageous conclusion that the law bans blatantly unfair practices, when that's what it sets out to do.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    I'm not sure even Apple wants to be flippant about EU regulation. "See this one neat legal flaw that EU regulators hate!" isn't an approach a US$350B-revenue-company wants to take, with a regulator who's already signalled their intent.
  - micwag 3y ago
    Apple probably will be able to continue to charge 99$/year for their developer kit.
  - zamadatix 3y ago
    It doesn't need to explicitly mention commissions, law is not an ACL. The regulators and DMA just need to consider that it qualifies as e.g. gatekeeping, which is centrally referenced. Even if it can't be defined as a required action of gatekeeping today the DMA allows for the commission to quickly update that to qualify and require action by Apple. If, by some miracle, the regulators truly made a law which doesn't allow them to regulate the anti-competitiveness they intended too and they are truly beat by some gotcha this time then Apple has only bought a delay not an exception. $99/year for the development kit will probably be seen as reasonable enough for it to be allowed, though they may have to accept allowing 3rd party alternative solutions to publish things to these other app stores or similar. The fixed price of the development kit isn't really the point when talking about the 30% commission though. That's about revenue from consumer purchases and trying to evade that via moving the pricing to the dev kit wholly then requiring the dev kit will not fly just because the DMA doesn't explicitly reference doing that being an example of a bad gatekeeping action.
    - gruez 3y ago
      >The regulators and DMA just need to consider that it qualifies as e.g. gatekeeping, which is centrally referenced. Even if it can't be defined as a required action of gatekeeping today the DMA allows for the commission to quickly update that to qualify and require action by Apple. If, by some miracle, the regulators truly made a law which doesn't allow them to regulate the anti-competitiveness they intended too and they are truly beat by some gotcha this time then Apple has only bought a delay not an exception. Is charging a royalty for using the iOS SDK "gatekeeping"? I don't see why that's the case. Is Epic Games "gatekeeping" Unreal Engine by demanding 5% royalty to use their engine? Why should it be any different for Apple to demand royalty for using their SDK? Even if EU magically made a law that explicitly banned royalties for operating system SDKs, that won't be the end of the story. Such measures could be construed as anti-free trade (given how it disproportionately affects US companies compared to EU companies), and will probably lead to a trade war and/or WTO arbitration between the EU and the US.
      - zamadatix 3y ago
        If they kept it to something like 5% and don't try to stop alternatives when used with other stores then it's probably not something that'd cause problems. The same is true for any sane pricing of external API integrations regardless of source as charging for push notifications or similar is fine by itself too. Where they'd get into trouble is by trying to turn these things into ways to move the 30% revenue cut. Just moving the 30% revenue from "rights to be on the one and only store" to "rights to write apps against the device with the one and only SDK" is quite clearly a different motive and forced cost model than having a 5% SDK fee where the developer is free to choose a different SDK. I.e. "but others charge for an SDK" doesn't allow you to then change your SDK cost model to exactly match what was deemed illegally anticompetitive forced market pricing. It just allows you to charge for your SDK in a competitive way, nothing more.
  - blueelephanttea 3y ago
    > And there is nothing anti-competitive about Apple charging for their developer kit. Not only that but a bunch of iOS apis incur services costs on Apple's side. Certainly seems valid that they should be able to charge to provide push notifications, iCloud storage, etc. There is a wide industry of businesses monetizing development kit usage and/or enterprise services. Nothing in the EU's regulations should preclude Apple from monetizing their investment into the iOS development platform.
dylan604 3y ago
isn't that what the $99/year fee is for? the commission from app sales was for the service provided via the store
abhibeckert 3y ago
Who says I'm using their tools? I might build my app using Electron or GTK. I don't think Apple can have a requirement to use their proprietary tools. That would be anti-competitive. If they want to make money off the tools... they should just charge a fee to buy the tools.
- fingerlocks 3y ago
  The regulation doesn’t allow you to mmap w^x willy-nilly, the hardening and sandbox are still enforced by the OS.
  - thejsa 3y ago
    > The regulation doesn’t allow you to mmap w^x willy-nilly Yesn’t; I don’t think the regulators would look kindly upon Apple restricting third-party JITs, since it’d give Safari/WebKit an unfair competitive advantage over other browser engines on iOS (something I believe the DMA is also meant to open up.)
  - apocalyptic0n3 3y ago
    Third party payments have always been possible to implement in iOS apps; I've done it myself. What happens, however, is Apple rejects your app during the review process if the payment is for something they deem should be an in-app purchase or subscription (physical purchases are fine). Without that review process, you don't have to use Apple's payment process and can use Stripe or Braintree or whatever you want, and bypass Apple's 15-30% commission.
    - fingerlocks 3y ago
      I think you responded to the wrong person. I was talking about the restrictions against mapping pages of memory as executable
m463 3y ago
Developing with non-apple toolchains would be a big win. It would be interesting to see if people can replace parts of ios (sort of like grapheneos cuts out google)