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Originally Posted by Andrew H.
That's not what "walled garden" means. A walled garden is an environment where nothing from "outside" can come in. I.e., the only way you can put apps on an iPhone is through their store; you can't put other apps on it.
This isn't true of the kindle at all; you can buy books at any store selling mobi books and e-mail it or sideload it to the kindle - or get free books from Gutenberg if you want. That's not a walled garden.
And the proprietary format doesn't matter at all. DRM is what matters. And DRMs are all proprietary.
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Oh sure, it'll work on anything... as long as it's Kindle. And only Kindle. You can buy it from somewhere else if you want, but it will only work on Kindle.
Wiki says:
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A walled garden is an analogy used in various senses in information technology. In the telecommunications and media industries, a "walled garden" refers to a carrier or service provider's control over applications, content, and media on platforms (such as mobile devices) and restriction of convenient access to non-approved applications or content.
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The way it's used - which is slightly more forgiving than its literal meaning, very clearly includes Amazon/Kindle. The fact that you can buy Kindle books from some other places doesn't change that it won't work on anything but Kindle, and that they try to make moving away from Kindle painful and expensive as a deterrent.
If they could, they would make it impossible for you to ever move away from Kindle without losing every book in your collection. They've already done that, for users who aren't savvy enough to know what Calibre and Alf are.
There are plenty of ways to do a walled garden. Some lock everything out; some lock everything in. Some do a mix of the two.
It matters to me. And it matters to a lot of other people. If you don't care, fine. But please don't try to tell me this isn't an issue, or that people who see it as an issue are just making things up. It is very clearly an issue, and has caused problems for plenty of people. It's almost intellectually insulting to claim otherwise.