HTML/JS aren't first class citizens on iOS when it comes to API access. You can't take pictures, get reliable sound playback, create notifications, etc.

Can you do those things on Android via HTML/JS? (Not bait I honestly don't know).

I'm not sure and I suspect not, however you can do these things on Android with your own app and not requiring app approval from Google.

Of course, there are other things you cannot do on Android even if you are an app. We will actually have lost this battle if all we get is the right to install any app we want (and then everyone loses interest and goes home, which is likely to be what happens at that point): what we need is the right to install any software we want.

According to this Quora thread, the answer is Not Yet. http://www.quora.com/How-can-a-HTML5-web-app-access-Camera-i...

The problem isn't really solved. There are things you can do with apps that you can't do in the web sandbox. Not everyone is re-implementing LinkedIn or Facebook.

You can't install open source apps on iOS.

You can't get GPL apps. There are other licenses.

Apple don't display any license information when purchasing an app so I think all OSI approved licenses are off limits since they all have a clause that requires the license text to be included by the distributor of the work.

Apple lists all the BSD-licensed parts of iOS under Settings/General/About/Legal. Third-party apps usually hide this information deep down in the About screen. I have also seen apps that come with a Settings bundle just to show the licensing information there.

I think it really is only an issue with the (L)GPL.

So?

That's a limitation of the license, not of the app store. Why should the app store have to accommodate all sorts of licenses?

Nobody reads license info anyway - I, and probably everyone else except Richard Stallman himself just click on OK and hope for applicable laws to protect me in case the license should contain unacceptable terms.

iOS got this right, and the GPL got it wrong.

Are there some restrictions in the Apple Developer Agreement that prevent one from distributing the source for your app on a 3rd party website? I have always heard the argument that you can't distribute GPL'd apps because the source cannot be bundled, however, the GPLv3 (and v2) do not explicitly require this as the only approved means of source distribution. In fact, section 6 outlines several methods - through which one could reasonably see that the source code could be made available elsewhere, as long as there were notice within the app on where to retrieve it.

Agreed, however, that there are other licenses which are less restrictive on those that distribute object code.

As an app developer I find lots of useful code online - most of it is licensed under the MIT license, meaning do with it whatever you want (by and large)

If you want to make it so other people may use your stuff, just put it under such a license. That's what I do - please, share and use, here you go. There are no strings attached.

If I see the words GPL, or even LGPL, I stay far away from it. I don't want some nutcase to sue me years down the road when my software has become popular, just because I wanted to save an hour of coding time for the 1.0 release.

As someone who releases software under GPL and LGPL, and hardware designs under CC licenses, I don't see how anyone would sue you over a GPL license. Unless, of course, you took something from a GPL licensed software and then did not provide your users the same liberty you had with the source.

Whether or not one individual prefers copyleft (viral) or non-copyleft licensing is largely due to their intent - not to garner the maximum number of users, but to ensure that anyone else who might profit from their works affords their users the same right. And, if you really wanted to people to do whatever they pleased with your work without regards to your desire, you would've made it public domain, not MIT-licensed. You chose a license because you had a desire that the license enforced.

You can add an app to the Home Screen and use HTML5 offline storage. All the other limitations of HTML5 still apply, though.

Yuck, web apps.