Apple AppStore infringing VLC media player license
Steve, don't fuck with the GPL community. Not cool.
Sounds like someone in the GPL community decided to try fucking with Apple, in the sense of "dally or consort with." It must be killing people to see that tasty hardware all bound up with Steve's plans for controlling his users.
I like "open-source or 'free' (as in speech) software," from that text you linked to.
I don't know how VLC got into the iTunes/App store. I hadn't thought about the GPL community getting it added knowing that Apple would violate the license.
My current employer has a whole department devoted to open source auditing, because they're paranoid about violating a GPL license -- the GNU one in particular. There are some other licenses (Berkeley Unix style) that are much less ugly (to a corporation) than GNU. A company the size of Apple has to be aware of the issues -- especially since this was raised previously with another GPL app in the App store.
Apple's stance is puzzling.
Some people think Apple has addressed the problem (through a change in their TOS) and GPL'd software is allowed in the store. More (with more depth) here.
Interesting. The change in TOS seem to address the issue. Reading between the lines, Rémi Denis-Courmont probably dislikes other aspects of the iTunes/App store (as do I), but those aspects of that store don't appear to be addressed by the GPL, which is more concerned about freedom for the source code than freedom for the resulting app.
FWIW, Rémi Denis-Courmont is a senior Meego software engineer. So in addition to probably not liking the Apple app store for personal reasons, he certainly has business reasons for presenting Apple in a bad light.
More.
|
- mark 10-30-2010 11:13 pm
Steve, don't fuck with the GPL community. Not cool.
- mark 10-30-2010 11:22 pm
Sounds like someone in the GPL community decided to try fucking with Apple, in the sense of "dally or consort with." It must be killing people to see that tasty hardware all bound up with Steve's plans for controlling his users.
- tom moody 10-31-2010 3:44 pm
I like "open-source or 'free' (as in speech) software," from that text you linked to.
- tom moody 10-31-2010 3:45 pm
I don't know how VLC got into the iTunes/App store. I hadn't thought about the GPL community getting it added knowing that Apple would violate the license.
My current employer has a whole department devoted to open source auditing, because they're paranoid about violating a GPL license -- the GNU one in particular. There are some other licenses (Berkeley Unix style) that are much less ugly (to a corporation) than GNU. A company the size of Apple has to be aware of the issues -- especially since this was raised previously with another GPL app in the App store.
Apple's stance is puzzling.
- mark 11-01-2010 7:39 am
Some people think Apple has addressed the problem (through a change in their TOS) and GPL'd software is allowed in the store. More (with more depth) here.
- jim 11-01-2010 2:49 pm
Interesting. The change in TOS seem to address the issue. Reading between the lines, Rémi Denis-Courmont probably dislikes other aspects of the iTunes/App store (as do I), but those aspects of that store don't appear to be addressed by the GPL, which is more concerned about freedom for the source code than freedom for the resulting app.
- mark 11-01-2010 5:30 pm
FWIW, Rémi Denis-Courmont is a senior Meego software engineer. So in addition to probably not liking the Apple app store for personal reasons, he certainly has business reasons for presenting Apple in a bad light.
- jim 11-01-2010 7:12 pm
More.
- mark 11-02-2010 1:17 am