OStatic

by Larry Siden on May. 26, 2010

It sounds like deja-vu all over again for Apple. Jobs did at the same thing at the beginning of the PC revolution, insisting on keeping the Mac a closed universe until it withered. Too bad. A great man and great company with great hubris.

by Lester Puppo on May. 27, 2010

I agree with @Larry Siden when he says that it sounds like a deja-vu. Besides, I really don't know where this constant competition and race will lead to. Is it really necessary to set the image of Apple as a the enemy of the market. After all, this is competition we are talking about.

by Lefty on May. 28, 2010

Why would Apple want to "change its ways" to cater to the FSF's demands, precisely? Let's recall that the President-for-Life of the FSF, "Dr." Richard Stallman, spent much of 2007 and 2008 claiming, without a shred of evidence, that Apple had installed a "secret back door" into OS X, right up until the point that a formal public retraction and apology was extracted from him by Apple's Legal department: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/mac-osx-mistakes-and-malfeatures

"I have said in speeches that Apple could forcibly impose software changes in Mac OS X, just as Microsoft can with Windows. I heard this in the Mac community, but there is no published information that confirms it, and I now believe that I was misinformed. There is no evidence that Apple has installed software changes without the user's permission. We have no way to verify that there is no backdoor in Mac OS X that could install changes without permission, but that is no basis to claim there is one. I apologize for repeating a criticism of Mac OS which I cannot substantiate and must presume is false."

The FSF has managed to make the corner it's busily painting itself into even smaller. It's a good thing Stallman's said he doesn't measure the free software movement's "success" by numbers: those can only dwindle.

With Google pushing the Apache-licensed bionic as a glibc replacement, and Apple pushing the NCSA-licensed clang as a gcc replacement, the FSF should be trying to make friends, not enemies. And they've just told the 50 million iPhone owners (not to mention iPods and iPads) that they're not welcome to use "free software" on their devices.

I expect the reaction will be (to the extent that any of those 50 million are even aware of this) that it must be a funny sort of "freedom" the FSF is going on about.

by an anonymous user on May. 29, 2010

It's important to note that the violation here was because of GPL 3 software. It's misleading to state the app store has problems with all GPL software, as a large majority is GPL 2.

by Lefty on May. 29, 2010

The previous comment by an anonymous user is incorrect: adding restrictions to the v2 GPL is unacceptable from the FSF's point of view as well. This is that cause for the vast majority of licensing incompatibilities between the GPL and other open source licenses.

The v3 GPL introduces a whole host of additional issues, above and beyond the issues over which the FSF brought this enforcement action. But the motivation for their enforcement action was most certainly not that the v3 GPL is problematical here while the v2 GPL is not.

by Lefty on May. 30, 2010

By the way, the FSF's enforcement action is likely to have a broader impact that just iPhone owners and the iTunes App Store. Based on Smith's explanation of the issue, the "Windows Marketplace for Mobile" and the "Android Market" are likewise unacceptable venues for the purveyance of GPL-licensed software. See my article at

http://freeishsoftware.org/index.php/the-news/110-an-analysis-of-the-imp...

for the details.

by Lefty on Jun. 03, 2010

Zonker: having spent some time looking into this, I've managed to find precisely two GPL-licensed iPhone applications which seemed to be available on the store: GNUgo, and "iDict: GNU Collaborative International Dictionary of English". The latter, by the way, is still up there (at $19.99!), still happily awaiting its own "enforcement action", I suppose.

That's an interesting case, by the way: CIDE is an XML file, GPL-licensed and GNU-copyrighted. The app is presumably a reader for the XML file. Is Apple "in violation" for not providing the raw XML file itself in addition to the app that the developer provides? I'd have to suppose so. At $19.99, Apple would pull in about six bucks per copy of this, not that there's any indication that any significant number have been sold: there isn't a single review of the product.

I really have to question your entire last paragraph. Two apps out of 200,000 is not a rising tide of free software coming to the iPhone. It certainly isn't going to justify to Apple the creation of an entire second store specifically for folks who imagine that a third-party can somehow create a contractual obligation between the FSF and Apple without Apple having any particular say in the matter.

I know you've worked at Big Companies just like I have, and to say that there's "no technical or legal reason" is accurate as far as it goes, but it doesn't mention that there are cost reasons, resource reasons, priority reasons, why-the-hell-should-we-do-this-anyway? reasons, and so on, weighing heavily against it.

Apple's more than happy, I'd say, to "pass the benefits of free software along to consumers"—so long as the free software in question isn't under the GPL license, as of this past week. I'd think the LGPL, and other weak- and non-copyleft licenses would—under most circumstances—not be problematic.

by John Sullivan on Jun. 08, 2010

Lefty, nobody at Apple ever said anything to us on the subject of a back door in Mac OS, much less their legal department. Do you have a source for that claim? Stallman simply decided to double-check what he had been told, and found it was not true.

In the case of the App Store, the FSF is not asking Apple to cater to its demands. It's asking Apple to stop mistreating Apple users. The FSF is also fulfilling its obligation to the developers who assigned the FSF their code so that someone would ensure anytime that code is distributed, it is distributed in way that respects user freedom and encourages further sharing.

It's pure doubletalk to claim that the FSF is denying Apple users the use of free software. It is Apple's terms that say users are not allowed to share, modify, examine, or freely use *any* of the software on the iPhone.

Yes, some non-copyleft free software can be used (and is) on the iPhone when Apple allows it, but the *user* would still be denied many freedoms over even that software by Apple's ToS, EULA, and DRM.

The FSF will continue responding to reports it receives of GPLed FSF software being distributed in a proprietary fashion, in the App Store and anywhere else.

by Lefty on Oct. 10, 2010

Sorry I missed this, John. I'm not really at liberty to name my source, but it seemed pretty authoritative to me, and—I think you have to admit—that page does read quite a bit like an extracted-by-cease-and-desist apology-and-retraction. If I've been misinformed, and that's not actually the case, I apologize.

If that is the case, and the apology was voluntary, then it's baffling to me why it continues on at great length, speculating on the notion that one can't prove that there isn't a back door in OS X. If no one demanded that Mr. Stallman retract and apologize for that positive statement, why bother burning a web page at all to exchange the one affirmative statement ("There's a back door in OS X!") to an apparently less-potentially-actionable double negative ("We can't know that there's not a back door in OS X!")...?

It's asking Apple to stop mistreating Apple users.

Is Apple "mistreating its users"? Have "its users" asked you to intervene on their behalf in this matter? Last time I checked, Apple's users (according to independent studies) were among the most satisfied customers around. Are you imputing mistreatment where the users themselves seem to feel none exist?

It's pure doubletalk to claim that the FSF is denying Apple users the use of free software. It is Apple's terms that say users are not allowed to share, modify, examine, or freely use *any* of the software on the iPhone.

Well, that's the way they choose to do business. If you want to do business with them—including getting an app into the App Store—that's how it's done. Those are the rules that all the other iPhone developers follow, and it's your choice to follow them or not. But don't blame Apple for your unwillingness to accord them the right to set their rules in their space. You're in no more a position to do that than you are to demand that your local supermarket sell you a competing chain's products, and you're in more way a position to claim that you're somehow being oppressed when they won't do it.

...the *user* would still be denied many freedoms over even that software by Apple's ToS, EULA, and DRM...

But isn't that an agreement that the user enters into freely, John? Are you denying them their right to choose?