That depends on what you mean by "win". If by winning you mean their platform is adopted by hackers and becomes popular with the subculture, then yes I agree w

That depends on what you mean by "win". If by winning you mean their platform is adopted by hackers and becomes popular with the subculture, then yes I agree with you. On the other hand, they may be more interested in defining "winning" as selling product to an audience that is not opposed to paying a premium price for quality if that means sacrificing some flexibility. Anyway, I'm not sure what's so "hacker un-friendly" about the current SDK. You can write and use anything you want on your own phone by paying nothing more than the $99 "anti-bozo tax", you just can't count on being able to distribute it via iTunes. If you're serious about being "open and free", you can even distribute your app without restriction in source code form. ...and for "serious" hackers, there's always the jailbreak option. Yes that will void your warranty and such but when has that stopped a good hacker before?