

Is there more to VLC's removal from the App Store? - st3fan
http://www.tuaw.com/2011/01/08/vlc-app-removed-from-app-store/

======
person
That article, and most of its reader comments, mildly sickens me. I love
Apple, but that doesn't mean I have to approve of DRM. It's crazy to see
everyone piling on Rémi when Apple made the decision to use DRM and thereby
exclude a whole category of OSS projects. A license is a license, and if DRM
is prohibited, there's not much wiggle room. I feel sorry for Rémi, as he'll
probably now be subjected to dozens of misguided angry emails.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Yeah, what a strategically brilliant move: fight DRM by removing one of the
most popular and full-featured players of unencumbered content from the hands
of users.

Because nothing sells DRM-free content like making it more difficult to play.

And it goes without saying that the sight of a single developer torpedoing a
popular project over the objections of both other developers and users is an
awesome commercial for open source.

~~~
martythemaniak
Both the GPL and VLC were around long before Apple's store. The developer
contributed to a project that had a very clear, existing copyrights and Apple
chose not to honour that. Simple as that.

And yes, seeing apple fanboys jump on this guy because he wants his rights
honoured is pretty sickening.

~~~
foljs
You can have all the right in the world and still be an a __hole.

~~~
sid0
One man's asshole is another man's hero. Who are you to judge him?

~~~
foljs
Obviously the "one man" in your opening sentence. Duh!

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pluies
The article is very critical of Rémi Denis-Courmont, but isn't it Apple's own
fault in the end? They're the ones who decided to make the App Store license
incompatible with the GPL.

~~~
cstross
Is it necessarily incompatible? Do the terms of service of the App store
prevent the _source code_ of the VLC iOS app from being redistributed freely?
(If not, then anyone with a copy of XCode and an iOS device could compile and
install it on their own device, and _with an iOS developer license_ would be
free to install on others. And in principle to make and distribute derivative
works.) As RMS has frequently noted, the GPL doesn't prevent anyone from
charging money for binaries of GPL'd code -- it just requires them to permit
redistribution of the source.

~~~
tzs
> Do the terms of service of the App store prevent the source code of the VLC
> iOS app from being redistributed freely?

GPL is not about source access. Source access is an implementation detail in
order to achieve the aims of GPL.

What the GPL is about is ensuring that the following three things apply to
every user of the software:

    
    
        They are free to run the software, for any purpose.
    
        They are free to study how it works, and to make changes to
        it. (GPL requires source availability because source is necessary
        to reasonably do this).
    
        They are free to give away copies of the software (the original
        or their modified version), as source or binaries.
    

To achieve this for every user, it is necessary for the GPL to disallow
distributors of GPL software from contractually or otherwise making recipients
agree to refrain from doing the above things.

The problem with the App Store and GPL is that the TOS for the App Store
requires the recipient to contractually agree to not do some of the above
things.

