Richard Stallman on Steve Jobs: correction

Re:Richard Stallman on Steve Jobs: correction by ebrenes on Thursday October 27, 2011 @06:01PM (#3165811)

Please illuminate me on this, as I'm honestly curious. From what I've read the App Store places this restriction on what type of distribution is allowed for software sold on the App Store. However, what's stopping the developers from using a dual license for the same app, and using one for the App Store and another that they distribute from their website.

I could easily envision an app I purchase through the App Store giving me access to the source code from the developer's chosen distribution channel under the GPL. It seems to me that main gripe is that they want to use the App Store infrastructure to spread this.

Or am I missing something? I'll readily admit I'm not an expert on these GPL issues, but I'm interested in this topic.

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Re:Richard Stallman on Steve Jobs: correction by gujk on Friday October 28, 2011 @01:27AM (#3167114)

I have a free game that you can download from my website. How do you propose to install it on your phone? Under iOS ecosystem rules, you can't (beyond some limits like 99 friends and family copy and a USB connection or something).

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Re:Richard Stallman on Steve Jobs: correction by ebrenes on Monday October 31, 2011 @04:56PM (#3179004)

You can have free apps in the App Store as far as I'm aware. The only restriction that I'm seeing is that you can't put a GPL on it. But you could just slap on any other license for purposes of the App Store, and allow access to the source code from your website.

However, if you rely on other GPL'ed code then I can see that it would be impossible to do that, as then it break the licenses of that other software. In which case it seems that the strong copy-left is what's screwing things up.

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Re:Richard Stallman on Steve Jobs: correction by loup-vaillant on Monday October 31, 2011 @07:37PM (#3179697)

It has been suggested elsewhere that the App Store probably excluded the GPL on purpose. Even if it didn't, it is unreasonable to say that it is copy-left's fault.

Also, I must repeat: "whatever the end user have access to is not free". My point is, if we want to free the end user, then the copy hold by the end user should be free. But a regular user isn't free to modify and redistribute the copy he hold on his iPhone, even if the original licence was a BSD one. Heck, even if he could, his modifications still have to pass through the App Store review process, which means there's no guarantee other users could benefits from them.

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