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Yes, it's a legal one. Under the DMA: The gatekeepers should, therefore, be required to ensure, free of charge, effective interoperability with, and access for

Yes, it's a legal one. Under the DMA: The gatekeepers should, therefore, be required to ensure, free of charge, effective interoperability with, and access for the purposes of interoperability to, the same operating system, hardware or software features that are available or used in the provision of its own complementary and supporting services and hardware

Kon-Peki 3y ago
The DMA absolutely allows charging money for access to a regulated platform. The Core Technology Fee is the only thing Apple is charging that can even remotely seem like it may be prohibited. We'll see how that goes: > Pricing or other general access conditions should be considered unfair if they lead to an imbalance of rights and obligations imposed on business users or confer an advantage on the gatekeeper which is disproportionate to the service provided by the gatekeeper to business users or lead to a disadvantage for business users in providing the same or similar services as the gatekeeper. The following benchmarks can serve as a yardstick to determine the fairness of general access conditions: prices charged or conditions imposed for the same or similar services by other providers of software application stores; prices charged or conditions imposed by the provider of the software application store for different related or similar services or to different types of end users; prices charged or conditions imposed by the provider of the software application store for the same service in different geographic regions; prices charged or conditions imposed by the provider of the software application store for the same service the gatekeeper provides to itself.
- internetter 3y ago
  > The Core Technology Fee is the only thing Apple is charging that can even remotely seem like it may be prohibited The CTF is the exact topic of discussion in the context I provided the clause
  - Kon-Peki 3y ago
    The CTF is a platform access fee, and not a fee for interoperating with system ABIs/services/APIs. That's the distinction, and why it isn't automatically illegal. It would only be illegal if it gives Apple's App Store an unfair competitive advantage. And as you can see from the text of the DMA, in order to declare the CTF illegal, the EC has to conduct a fair, impartial, fact-based investigation that considers Apple's viewpoint. Then they produce a preliminary report which Apple is allowed to rebut. After that they can issue a final ruling, and Apple is allowed to appeal that to the court of justice. Even if the CTF is found to be illegal after all of that, Apple gets 6+ months to make changes unless the EC can prove that they were working in bad faith.
    - EMIRELADERO 3y ago
      > The CTF is a platform access fee, and not a fee for interoperating with system ABIs/services/APIs. Since Apple already charges $99/yr for a dev account, for which the Xcode price is included, and the CTF applies even when not using the App Store... what are they charging for if not API access in the form of the dev's user's devices? That's the only thing that's left
      - halostatue 3y ago
        The CTF applies when not using the App Store, because the equivalent of the CTF is baked into Apple's 30%. People asked for unbundling, and this is what Apple came up with. Those who are surprised that you have to pay for access to an ABI have obviously never had to pay for their compilers from their software vendors (the price for the HP-UX garbage compiler was eye wateringly high).
        garaetjjte 3y ago
        GCC works on HP-UX, so I don't know what this is trying to prove. They can charge for Xcode whatever they want, but what does that have to do with installing apps.
        smoldesu 3y ago

Kon-Peki 3y ago

The DMA absolutely allows charging money for access to a regulated platform. The Core Technology Fee is the only thing Apple is charging that can even remotely seem like it may be prohibited. We'll see how that goes: > Pricing or other general access conditions should be considered unfair if they lead to an imbalance of rights and obligations imposed on business users or confer an advantage on the gatekeeper which is disproportionate to the service provided by the gatekeeper to business users or lead to a disadvantage for business users in providing the same or similar services as the gatekeeper. The following benchmarks can serve as a yardstick to determine the fairness of general access conditions: prices charged or conditions imposed for the same or similar services by other providers of software application stores; prices charged or conditions imposed by the provider of the software application store for different related or similar services or to different types of end users; prices charged or conditions imposed by the provider of the software application store for the same service in different geographic regions; prices charged or conditions imposed by the provider of the software application store for the same service the gatekeeper provides to itself.

internetter 3y ago
> The Core Technology Fee is the only thing Apple is charging that can even remotely seem like it may be prohibited The CTF is the exact topic of discussion in the context I provided the clause
- Kon-Peki 3y ago
  The CTF is a platform access fee, and not a fee for interoperating with system ABIs/services/APIs. That's the distinction, and why it isn't automatically illegal. It would only be illegal if it gives Apple's App Store an unfair competitive advantage. And as you can see from the text of the DMA, in order to declare the CTF illegal, the EC has to conduct a fair, impartial, fact-based investigation that considers Apple's viewpoint. Then they produce a preliminary report which Apple is allowed to rebut. After that they can issue a final ruling, and Apple is allowed to appeal that to the court of justice. Even if the CTF is found to be illegal after all of that, Apple gets 6+ months to make changes unless the EC can prove that they were working in bad faith.
  - EMIRELADERO 3y ago
    > The CTF is a platform access fee, and not a fee for interoperating with system ABIs/services/APIs. Since Apple already charges $99/yr for a dev account, for which the Xcode price is included, and the CTF applies even when not using the App Store... what are they charging for if not API access in the form of the dev's user's devices? That's the only thing that's left
    - halostatue 3y ago
      The CTF applies when not using the App Store, because the equivalent of the CTF is baked into Apple's 30%. People asked for unbundling, and this is what Apple came up with. Those who are surprised that you have to pay for access to an ABI have obviously never had to pay for their compilers from their software vendors (the price for the HP-UX garbage compiler was eye wateringly high).
      - garaetjjte 3y ago
        GCC works on HP-UX, so I don't know what this is trying to prove. They can charge for Xcode whatever they want, but what does that have to do with installing apps.
        smoldesu 3y ago