On 8 February 2011 15:50, Stefan Kersten <s...@k-hornz.de> wrote: > the known precedents make it a risky undertaking trying to distribute _any_ > GPL'd application through the app store, because apple might decide to take it > out in any moment; not a sound foundation to build any business model on ...
I imagine it's more a question of whether other copyright holders in the GPL software might object (in which case Apple would pull it -- this is what happened with VLC and Gnu Go) than of Apple spontaneously deciding to remove it. I'm not finding it easy to work out the exact situation from the T&Cs at http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/us/terms.html#APPS. This document notes that individual applications may have different EULAs from the default Apple-provided one, so the "licensed application EULA" (which is definitely GPL-incompatible) wouldn't necessarily have to apply -- but the implication seems to be that the App Store Product Usage Rules would still apply because they are not part of the section identified as the EULA. And they also appear incompatible with the GPL (e.g. section 6 of GPLv2), though it may depend on who the "You" in the GPL is understood to refer to in this context (Apple or you). Basically I think if you own the copyright or have the agreement of everyone who does, then in practice you probably can get away with putting GPL'd code in the Apple stores -- but as soon as someone might reasonably object, then you're quite likely stuffed regardless of whether you made your best effort to comply with the GPL or not. A pity it's such a grey area, it does make things rather unpredictable. Doesn't look like there's any such problem with the Android market, as far as I can see (http://www.google.com/mobile/android/market-tos.html, http://www.android.com/us/developer-distribution-agreement.html). Chris -- dupswapdrop -- the music-dsp mailing list and website: subscription info, FAQ, source code archive, list archive, book reviews, dsp links http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/music-dsp http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/music-dsp
