Web guru -- Apple's goal for iPhone is a "Disney-fied walled garden"

Add one more prominent voice to those charging Apple is an enemy of open source. Tim Bray, co-developer of XML, charges that Apple is a foe of open source and online freedom, and says that to help combat that, he will be taking a position on Google's Android team.

Bray was a co-founder of Open Text Corporation, co-developer of the XML standard, and until recently Director of Web Technologies for Sun Microsystems.

He's also a prominent blogger. In his most recent blog post, Now A No-Evil Zone, he explains why he's taking a job on the Google Android team.

In the blog post, he takes dead aim at Apple for being an enemy of open source, for using its lawyers to go after HTC, and for banning certain apps from the iPhone. Here's what he has to say:

The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet's future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It's a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord's pleasure and fear his anger.

I hate it.

I hate it even though the iPhone hardware and software are great, because freedom's not just another word for anything, nor is it an optional ingredient.

Later on, he adds:

Apple apparently thinks you can have the benefits of the Internet while at the same time controlling what programs can be run and what parts of the stack can be accessed and what developers can say to each other.

I think they're wrong and see this job [at Google) as a chance to help prove it.

The tragedy is that Apple builds some great open platforms; I've been a happy buyer of their computing systems for some years now and, despite my current irritation, will probably go on using them.

Android is already a threat to the iPhone. With Bray on board, it will be even more formidable.