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A comment on VLC Submits iPad App to App Store. Parent comment

Re:VLC Submits iPad App to App Store by jcl on Thursday September 09, 2010 @03:25PM (#1676556)
Actually, the GPL is not exercised in that example. As the author of Doom, id Software can do whatever they want with it; they are not going to sue themselves for violating the GPL.

The GPL's terms only become relevant when a third party wants to use it to distribute the work. And it seems the GPL (v3, at least) would not allow a third party to publish Doom on the App Store.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/762498/iphone-and-gpl

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Re:VLC Submits iPad App to App Store by cosgroveb on Thursday September 09, 2010 @04:07PM (#1676739)
It seems that you're right. I did some further digging, and it seems that at least in the case of GNU Go, the FSF held the following opinion:

"the particular license violation that FSF brought up with Apple was section 6 of the GPLv2, which states that a redistributor of the licensed program may not impose further restrictions on the recipients to copy, distribute, or modify the program. Apple's App Store terms of service do impose several restrictions, such as limiting usage of the program to five devices approved by Apple."

http://lwn.net/Articles/391423/

Looks like I was wrong!

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