Kyle Poole said,
>
> The ToS applies to the specific binary you download from the AppStore,
> which is enabled to run on your device using DRM.


Which is exactly the problem. Apple's distribution is not GPLv2 compliant.
The restrictions applied to the specific binary by the ToS conflict with the
license. I wouldn't consider this interpretation of the GPL to be either
"narrow" or "fundamentalist".



> Apple does not pose
> any restrictions on the source code or Wesnoth iPhone as a whole


This is why distribution of the wesnoth for iphone source code can be done
in compliance with GPLv2.



> It is similar to the "tivoization"
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization) problem with GPLv2.


No. "Tivoization" has to do with hardware restrictions. The iPhone also has
this problem due to the so-called "walled garden" approach. However, this
does not conflict with GPLv2.

I'm all for porting to iphone/ipad and distributing source and binary and
whatever, as long as the distribution is in compliance with GPLv2. Apple's
distribution in its app store is not.

As to what is actually going on with this iphone port seems to be confused
let me try to explain it as I understand it. There are not iphone "porters",
there is just Kyle Poole. He ported wesnoth to the iphone and sells it in
the app store. He keeps some percentage of the sales and the rest goes to
the Battle for Wesnoth (Project?). I have been unable to find any
information on who gets what and how much money is being made. The decision
to allow this was made I assume on irc, but I am unwilling to wade through
the logs to find such records. I am about 99.9% certain that no discussion
was had on this mailing list, even though it seems the natural place for it.
I also found no specific discussion on the forums. Though this seems odd in
hindsight, at the time I imagine that everyone involved assumed that no
distribution would be in violation of the license.

While I can understand (even if I don't agree with) silencing discussion of
this topic on the forum, I'm somewhat disappointed by how hostile the
reaction both there and here seems to be. Also, when the discussion was
brought up on the forum, the suggestion to handle any questions privately
with lead developers was even worse, and I hope that this topic continues to
be discussed publicly.

Also, I'm uncomfortable with the implication that the project is getting
enough money from this distribution to overlook any license violation. If
that is the case, then I would be much happier with Rusty's suggestion of
making such a license exception clear.

Despite my obviously anti-app-store-distribution stance, as things stand, I
don't intend to enforce any rights that I have to the distributed code.

-Chris Hopman
_______________________________________________
Wesnoth-dev mailing list
[email protected]
https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev

Reply via email to