FT Buys Developer of its App
Tue, 10 Jan, 2012
The FT, whose iPad and Android app is one of the undoubted stars of the tablet universe, likes the product so much, it's bought the developers, Assanka. The FT didn't want to pay a 30 percent royalty to Apple and didn't want to be tied to a particular platform, so it went the web app route. Assanka itself is committed to the idea of producing publications as web apps, using HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript - effectively a set of open technologies. According to the London-based company:
"Assanka firmly believes that the craze for native apps is a short one and we are already seeing it on the wane. Native apps, which need to be distributed via a proprietary app store controlled by an operator or device manufacturer, also suffer from being restricted to the platform for which they are built, necessitating an almost complete rewrite for each different platform. Maintaining separate, functionally equivalent apps for Android, iOS, Blackberry OS6, Playbook, WebOS AND Windows Phone is an expensive and time consuming business, something that major publishers realise only too well.
"Native apps have other limitations too. Web technology has matured over 15 years to provide a rich set of tools for making web applications that are open, accessible and linkable. The very ethos of web development is that it is fundamentally an open platform, inviting integration, connecting, linking and sharing of information. Native apps construct a silo around themselves and operate in their own artificially constructed world. Everything in that world may be beautiful and the user experience may be dazzling, but the value is locked into that container.
"Native apps will always have a place on mobile devices, particularly for applications such as gaming where the performance demands are high and graphics requirements are intensive. Games often also take advantage of features such as accelerometers which are not (yet) available to access from web applications. For apps that need to take advantage of bleeding edge technology and offer exceptional performance, native code is still a good option. But for news and magazine publishers, the tide is turning."
This is good news for the open source movement and provides yet another nail in the coffin of conventional approaches to intellectual property rights. We should celebrate it and start thinking hard about how best to radically reform copyright, rather than tinker with it or try to protect it with draconian legislation.
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