The incisive, insightful John Gruber on the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s manifesto:

The piece is supposed to be a criticism of Apple’s platform design and policies, but really, what they’re doing is criticizing users for enjoying it.

A couple of days ago, the Electronic Frontier Foundation released a manifesto on the future of computing, claiming that companies that offer closed computing systems (like Apple and Microsoft) are violating mobile user’s fundamental rights.  I use the term rights here because they use it at the end of the piece in the section “toward a bill of rights for mobile computer owners” and employ phrases like “deprived of liberty.”  The basic thrust of the argument is that all computing devices should be open, meaning that users should be able to add or modify the software and hardware in any way they see fit.  The piece is not long, and is worthwhile reading.

It has generated some pretty thoughtful critical responses within the Apple-using blogosphere.  I won’t go so far as Peter Cohen at the Loop and title this post “The EFF can suck it“, but I do think the EFF’s material is both poorly framed and poorly argued. As is probably the case with all manifestos, they ignore a host of reasonable principles and perspectives in order to try to motivate the masses.

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