> Laws are made when some group with sufficient political power wants them to be made, and such groups are often driven by tradition, what they perceive to be t

> Laws are made when some group with sufficient political power wants them to be made, and such groups are often driven by tradition, what they perceive to be tradition. This can certainly be a motivator. In Europe, and the EU in particular, many individual member states as well as the EU itself have the tradition of including an explanatory memorandum when passing new laws. The function of this is to explain the mindset of the legislators and the motivation behind a law. It is sometimes used by courts to gain clarity on laws that might be a bit more ambiguous in their intent. Below is a link to the explanatory memorandum of the DMA. I wasn’t able to find a reference to traditions on regarding licensing fees, or monetization of IP. But you’re welcome to point me in the right direction. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52020PC0842 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE... > Some readings of this law I've seen forbid Apple from charging fees for distributing apps outside its store and from using any legal workarounds to circumvent that prohibition. It remains to be seen how EU regulators and courts will interpret it. Could you point me to these readings, or better yet the specific articles that these readings are based on? To the best of my knowledge the DMA has little in the way of price regulation. So this is news to me. > Your comment makes several references to "IP", but isn't clear about what IP is involved. The IP in question would be code written by Apple provided in the form of frameworks, SDKs, APIs and the like. There’s also the use of software like Xcode, but for the sake of simplicity let’s stick with code written by Apple. Creating an app by definition makes use of this IP. IP I’m sure will have cost a considerable amount to develop by Apple, so I can see why they’re eager to get payment for it or, alternatively, strategically decide who can use it for free. Trade secrets aren’t really involved in this and neither is copying, at least not in most cases.