Hey Alex, thanks for taking the time to write a great response to some
of my questions. I've responded to your points below. Please let me
know what you think.
On Oct 6, 2009, at 3:04 PM, Alex Smith wrote:
iPhone is that I have heard (although do not know this for a fact)
that
giving the source for applications violates Apple's terms; apparently
using Apple's SDK for the iPhone requires you to sign a non-disclosure
agreement that prevents you from giving the application's source
out. As
a result, there'd be no way that anyone could simultaneously get a
licence from Apple to develop a version of Enigma for the iPhone, and
from the Enigma developers to port it to the iPhone; any course of
action would break one agreement or the other.
This is no longer true (although it was true when the linux.com
article referenced below was written). Apple dropped that requirement
in late 2008 IIRC. I've read and reread the contract and I can find no
mention of source code, source code licenses, Apple owning the source
code, Apple owning the binary, any rights to the application or
limiting distribution of the source code.
There any many applications available on the app store that are open
source. They even state it in their product information copy. Take the
game Tyrian for example:
APPLICATION DESCRIPTION: ".... This is a re-write of the original
Tyrian v2.1 game by Jason Emery, Daniel Cook... It is based on
OpenTyrian project's source code and licensed under the GNU GPL v2....
In accordance with GPL v2, the source code is available upon request."
Another example is the IRC client known as Colloquy. There is an
Colloquy mobile app on the app store which uses "Open minded and open
source, like it should be" as one of it's selling points. Here's the
source code: http://colloquy.info/project/browser/trunk and here is
the product information page with links the app store and the source
code: http://colloquy.mobi/
Other example applications that are open source: Wordpress (a
Wordpress blog interface), Barcodes (a barcode reader) and others.
I have an application pending approval right now that I've developed
and is licensed under GPL v2 and states in the product description the
URL to get the source code. That same URL is presented to the user
when they start the application on the iPhone or iPod touch.
See <http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/131752> for a more in-depth
explanation of this.
Another potential problem would be that as a typical (unmodified)
iPhone
will only run code signed by Apple, it would be impossible to legally
distribute GPLv3 code onto the iPhone (section 6 of version 3 of the
GPL
licenced under version 2 of the GPL or above; version 2 doesn't have
this protection; however, with a project with a licence like that,
there's always a risk that it will choose to move to version 3
(which is
possible, apart from some GPLv2-only levels), leaving a possible
iPhone
port in the lurch even if you did manage to develop it somehow
I realize Enigma could switch to GPL v3, at which time I would have to
remove the Enigma port for the iPhone from the app store. But, as you
mentioned above ("there are a lot, and many of them are unlikely to
consent to a change of licence in any case") that seems unlikely.
I believe one of the intents of the GPL is to make the source code
freely (as in beer) and easily available to anyone and make it easily
modifiable under the same license. Would I care if someone grabbed the
source to Enigma for the iPhone, added some features and put it up on
the app store under a different name? Nope. Would I care if they
charged for it? Nope, that's the way capitalism works! :)
Thanks!
Geoff
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