Slashdot Mirror
Apple Smacks Down iCommune
flipsidejones writes "Looks like Apple has killed iCommune. iCommune, as mentioned previously, allows users to share music libraries across a network from within iTunes. It seems the license for the iTunes plugin API does not allow for software-based plugins (only hardware: MP3 players, etc). Apple issued a 'Notice of Breach and Termination of License' to iCommune, who have since pulled the download. Something tells me that they won't be putting it back up anytime soon. Every time I forget about Mac OS X being proprietary, Apple does something to remind me." Well, in fairness, this could happen even if Mac OS X itself weren't proprietary, as iTunes still could be. For that matter, iCommune still is, too. Hm, none of that makes me feel any better ...
I'd like to see this type of editorial byline in the next Borg article, please.
I'm constantly amazed at how Apple is really not considered evil because they happen to sell an OS based on Unix. Duh. They're a company that sells stuff and makes money just like any other.
"Every time I forget about Mac OS X being proprietary, Apple does something to remind me."
I took a nice new car that I saw at the dealership down the block, and the bastards called the police on me.
Everytime I forget that certain goods and services cost money, Lexus does something to remind me. Isn't this America? Can't I have everything for free?! The terrorists have already won.
Sounds like they're putting the kibosh on this project because they plan to do something like this in the near future. They may even have plans to make this a paid upgrade to the free iTunes download. Who knows?
I actually thought they'd go after iCommune for trademark dilution...
Completely irrelevant - this is to do with the terms the iCommute guys agreed to when they used the iTunes SDK.
You may not like the APSL for political reasons, but it's got nothing to do with this.
Wouldn't one of the reasons that iCommune got pulled is because Apple is probably building in Rendezvous support for iTunes into iTunes 4? They don't want to be beaten to the punch, and a third party offering "Rendezvous-like" functionality goes against Apple's plan.
I may be missing the point, but what is it about iCommune that was so different from sharing the files over a network via network protocols, anyway?
Since iTunes is a proprietary work, I'm not too upset by this - luckily, all iCommune needs to do to counter this is to produce an MP3 player better than iTunes, open source it, and they can very well do what they please. Just because iTunes is a proprietary MP3 player doesn't mean that it's the only possible one that'll work on the MacOSX platform.
This is more molehill than mountain.
The next release of iTunes is slated to include P2P technology over Rendezvous(sp).
As much as I hate to see projects killed, in this case, its not necessarily a Bad Thing(tm). In windows-land, I've got a plethora of networks to hound for one file, depending on who has it. With my mac, I'll only have one, and if the file is out there, it's on that network.
Like I said killed OSS projects are bad, mmmkay? But, a single, united, SUPPORTED p2p network is (maybe) worth it.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Considering that according to last July's MWNY keynote, the next version of iTunes will be coming soon with this exact same feature, I'm surprised Apple didn't just wait until they ship iTunes 4 or whatever and just kill off iCommune the same way they killed WindowShade (incorporated into System 7), Watson (incorporated into OS X 10.2), etc.
Unless there's some reason they think we would prefer iCommune to their Rendezvous iTunes...?
Now if Microsoft had done this, with their cold unfriendly pointy user interfaces, that would be a sin worthy of no less than torture and death for Gates and all his ilk.
Those who complain that the Slashdot editors and much of the readership have a double standard where Apple and Microsoft are concerned are clearly missing one extremely important fact:
Need I say more?So far as I can tell, the APSL doesn't even apply here. The violation they are talking about has to do with the license that people agree to when they use the SDK (Software Development Kit) that Apple provides for making iTunes plugins. I haven't determined exactly what was violated in that agreement, but it wasn't the APSL, so far as I can tell.
Seems to me that the RIAA is starting to sue the hell out of anyone doing anything special with music or media in general.
It's good business sense for Apple to cover their asses by squashing something they fear might get the RIAA crawling up their innards.
And with earnings in the red, Apple is sure to be sensitive to the desires of shareholders, who might not be savvy enough to understand that a 3rd party tool should really not be of Apple's concern.
That would be nicer if you get actually get to Kazaa networks with a Mac. **grumble** At least give us the code, so we can make it ourselves. The Neo app works, but it's only one way + requires basically wardailing for hosts. I mean, I get that maybe FastTrack doesn't want to put the resources into supporting the Mac, but at least give us the opportunity to do it ourselves by opening the code. Kindof ironic, really--you would think that a someone in the biz of "free sharing" would make their code as open as possible.
--
$tar -xvf
So, Apple decided not to take on the considerable risk of being seen to sponsor music piracy.
Sounds reasonable.
Now, this is a more interesting question: why do some people believe that Apple had a responsibility to risk it's neck so you can download tunez more easily? Why do some people believe that just because Apple sold a certain product, they must have a responsibility to provide other things, such as use of their software for music distribution, too?
I'm not sure about the answer... I expect it's something depressing.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Hey, it's the apple iTunes API license, not the apple public source license. Let's see, agree to one license to start developing a plugin for a proprietary App. Then, violate that license. Get caught... Oh yeah, don't forget to complain about an entirely different license just because it furthers your own philosophy... Complete disregard for facts...
From: "James G. Speth"
Well, for what it's worth, here's the letter that Apple sent me:
---
Subject: Notice of Breach and Termination of License
Dear Mr. Speth,
It has come to our attention that you are distributing a software program
called iCommune that violates the terms of the Apple Computer, Inc. iTunes
Device Plug-In SDK Agreement you executed. The iTunes SDK materials are
licensed only for the purpose of enabling the Licensee's hardware device
identified in the agreement to interoperate with iTunes. The iTunes SDK is
not licensed for use in a software program for sharing of music over a
network. Your distribution of this program is a violation of the license
agreement and of Apple's intellectual property rights.
Due to your breach of the agreement, Apple hereby gives notice of
termination of your license agreement pursuant to Section 7.2 of the
agreement and demands that you cease distribution of the iCommune program
immediately and return the iTunes SDK materials to Apple.
Please contact me as soon as you receive this notice to confirm that you are
taking immediate action to cease violating the agreement, and in particular,
to cease distributing your iCommune software.
Sincerely,
[deleted]
Sr. Director, Products Law
Apple Computer, Inc.
---
and here's some pertinent info from the agreement we entered:
1.5 "Licensee Devices" means Licensee's hardware devices identified in Exhibit A or
in an Addendum to this Agreement signed by Apple.
7.2 If any breach of this Agreement by Licensee continues for more than thirty (30)
days after Licensee's receipt of Apple's written notice, Apple may terminate this
Agreement by written notice to Licensee, whereupon this Agreement and all rights
granted to Licensee herein shall immediately cease. Apple may immediately upon
written notice terminate this Agreement if Licensee becomes insolvent, has a receiver
appointed, makes an assignment for the benefit of creditors, or becomes the subject
of any proceeding under any bankruptcy, insolvency, or debtor's relief law. The
rights of the parties under this clause are in addition to any other rights and
remedies provided by law or under this Agreement.
Exhibit A
Licensee Devices
SECTION BELOW MUST BE COMPLETED BY LICENSEE FOR EACH
LICENSEE Device
1. Name and description of Licensee Device(s):
component system mp3 player console
---
Now, my description of the device might be a little vague, but it does describe an application for which I use iCommune. I have a Mac G4 Cube set up as the media center of my living room. It's hooked into my stereo and television. I use iTunes and iCommune on the Cube to turn it into the mp3 player console I was envisioning when I started work on it. I use iCommune on my laptop to control that system. Unlike your typical device which is directly connected to the computer running iTunes, these systems talk over the network to each other.
I think I'm in compliance with the agreement, but they don't. Hopefully we'll be able to work something out. Otherwise, I'm thinking of ways to do this without the Device Plug-in API, so the project might survive.
Jim
...ranting about how evil Apple is because they make proprietary software and how this is inherently casts them as The Man who is trying to crush our every freedom...consider that back in October they were herealded as pretty much the only company standing up for our rights. (I can't seem to raise the page but here is the Google cache.)
It occurs to me that Apple may have less-than-evil reasons for terminating the contract, not the least of which is to retain their credibility by not becoming associated with some half-assed Napster clone.
Or, they could just be evil. I guess.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
Only public SDK is the visual-plugin. The device plug SDK is by request. So only those who have it can answer that question.
The solution of course is to rewrite it using visual API and leaching the audio. As the Visual SDK has no restrictions mentioned about hardware.
Note that iCommune essentially used no code; it was just somethin which generated a few lines of apache config which would make the Music directory shared:
/Foo/Music
...
.pls file. I.e. the type you normally click on.
_ rendezvous/
Alias
Al.ow from all
Along with a small perl/python script which took your playlist and turned it into a
That is all. Any one who can handle vi can do it manually.
However, combine this with Eric his mod_rendevous and then it gets interesting... http://homepage.mac.com/macdomeeu/dev/current/mod
As that will dynamically announce your web server to the local network.
In Safari; just go to bookmarks, rendezvous - and here we go. Sharing as it should be.
Dw.
The problem isn't the APSL, it's the iTunes SDK license that developers have to agree to. That license keeps developers from making software plug-ins (except for visualizers).
In cases like this, just don't agree to the API license. There are tools for digging into Cocoa apps and figuring out the class interfaces. I've already dug into iCal and iChat -- they don't have APIs, but there is some interesting stuff in there. (If I'd been looking, I might have seen some of the unnanouced iLife hooks talked about at Macworld!)
That said, I don't think iTunes is Cocoa. It used to be Soundjam, right? So it's probably Carbon and the obj-c digging tools won't help much. Not sure the best way to figure out Carbon APIs. In the old days, we'd use MacNosy to "decompile" the code. Not sure what the Carbon equivalent would be.
This is not about P2P. iCommune sucks as a way to share music illegally, because you have to stream it, you can't copy it. Sure, that doesn't make it legal, but it makes it stupid as a means to "steal" music from a friend. The only way to copy an MP3 is outside of iTunes, using some external web client, as iCommune just shares via Apache. And if you are going to do that, you don't even need iCommune, you can just tell Apache to share your MP3 directory!
iCommune does not serve MP3s, Apache does. iCommune does not copy MP3s, only an external web client could. This isn't about stopping P2P. It is about Apple using its license to prevent someone from doing something they don't like, probably because, as only a few people mentioned, Apple is going to enable Rendezvous sharing in iTunes (in theory, someday).
Uh, it's not about Mac OS X being proprietary. It's not about the DMCA. It's not about the RIAA. It's not about Big Corporations squashing innovation. It's about the iCommune folks agreeing to a license when they used the API, and violating the terms of that license, and Apple revoking it. Apple is fully within their rights to do this, and I have no sympathy for iCommune at all. They agreed to the license, and they broke the rules. That's just too damn bad.
And it's not like Apple used the DMCA or something to do this. ALl they did was send a letter saying "Hey, you agreed to this license, and now you violated it. Please stop."
Come on people, it's a LICENSE. Just because you don't like the terms of it doesn't mean it's not real. You know that if someone violated the terms of the GPL and got in trouble for it, we'd all be celebrating. When you support the enforcement of one LICENSE and cry foul when another is enforced, you lose a lot of credibility.
Now, if the license was ambiguous, and what icommune did wasn't specifically prohibited, and then Apple tried to claim it was, then I'd be upset. But this is open and shut.
Frankly, I'm getting a little upset about seeing all these stories on /. designed to trick you into thinking someone is stomping on your rights. Like the one about the student who STOLE documents from a law firm. And this one about a LICENSE VIOLATION. What's next? "Man Arrested for Possession of Linux: Police arrest man for breaking into BestBuy and stealing copies of RedHat Linux"
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Please give insight on how Apple steals from the open source community. If I recall correctly:
--They gave their changes to GCC back to the community
--They gave us Rendevous
--They are giving their changes to KHTML back to the KDE community
--They gave us Darwin to play with
--And quite possibly many many more that I don't know.
I'm feeding the troll, yes i know. But it's got to stop. Moderators, mod him down.
"Full sources for linux currently runs to about 200kB compressed" --Linus Torvalds 31-Jan-1992
Like I said killed OSS projects are bad, mmmkay? But, a single, united, SUPPORTED p2p network is (maybe) worth it.
You have just expressed a wry gladness that the project was killed, so that your convinience may be better served by having to look in only one place to find a file you are looking for, and with the next breath essentially said "I feel your pain" when you've made it rather clear you do not.
Not only that, but your grand One P2P to Rule Them All and Bind Them will be a propriatary, commercial venture, subject to all the long term instability that implies, such as cut budgests, etc.), inaccessibility (no guarantee it will be compatible with anyone else, limiting your trading to just other mac players, a very small percentage of online file sharers), licensing restrictions (which may or may not be draconian, but either way, where's your choice gone?), possible monitoring capabilities (it is one network, after all, with likely only one approved client), and (seemingly remote at this time, but that will change on a dime if political or economic pressures come to bear) possibly DRM technology built in.
Not to mention it will be a single point of failure. One good lawsuit from the media cartels, a single injunction, and you are out of business with no alternatives to turn to, and your own vendor prohibiting anyone else from offering you one.
Welcome to the world of proprietary software. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Apple is a much nicer Master than Microsoft, and both their equipment and software are superior in every way, but they remain a master, and you a serf subject to their corporate whims. Furthermore, as occasional actions like this have demonstrated time and time again historically, there is absolutely no guarantee that Apple will remain the kinder Master in the future. At some point, these sorts of restrictions make it clear even to the most subserviant that no amount of convinience is worth this kind of tradeoff, and that freedom actually is something worth a modicum of effort to achieve, maintain, and insure.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I'm constantly amazed at how Apple is really not considered evil because they happen to sell an OS based on Unix. Duh. They're a company that sells stuff and makes money just like any other. ...
...
/.ers would like to think. Within each organization there are lots of different factions.
e rnment/take-your-pick dogma. Following the popular anti-whatever rhetoric gets you karma or a nice troll. I can say that because when I was first introduced to the concepts of free software and open source, I swallowed the whole philosphy. Reading slashdot and other open source forums have allowed me to look in the mirror enough to realize how stupid it can sometimes sound.
So they're evil because they're a company that sells stuff?
<rant>
Exactly. You know I'm really getting tired of slashdot articles _and_ comments which suggest that such and such a company or organization is evil or good. Whether it's Apple or Microsoft or even the RIAA, things are not as black and white as most
Since when did the FSF become the bastion of all that is good and pure? Since when did making money become a crime? I don't think I want to label any company as purely good or evil, and particularly not any action so general as making money! Too many of us here are simply zealots, blindly spewing doctrine based on some twisted free-software/open-source/unix-rules/fsck-the-gov
Don't get me wrong, I love open source. I agree with many of these principles. Heck, I contribute to couple projects and release open source code myself! But I hope I'm pragmatic enough not to simply buy the standard dogma that makes comments like "M$ sucks" or "making money is evil" rated "Insightful". Okay, <rant> off.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
Some examples to show that Apple isn't "stealing from the OSS community . . ."
- Darwin
- OpenDarwin.org - "OpenDarwin.org, jointly founded in April 2002 by Internet Software Consortium, Inc. (ISC) and Apple, is an attempt to take cooperative Darwin development to the next level. Membership in the OpenDarwin project and access to its works are open to everyone. The project is also fully independent, with control over its own web site, project news, bug tracking information and CVS repository, as well as any other services that the community owners may wish to provide. Neither Apple nor ISC take any responsibility for, or exercise any editorial control over, the OpenDarwin project."
- Rendezvous - see also http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/02/08/29/2310214.
s html?tid=107
Apple's tactics regarding 3rd party developers, its choice of licences, etc. are open to debate. However, I don't think it's correct to say that all Apple is doing is "stealing". And besides, Open Source software is meant to be copied, looked at, modified, redistributed. (I'll save the discussion about "if you want people to abide by GNU, you have to be willing to abide by other licences" for someone else). Apple is doing just this, and as far as I can tell creating good products. If you don't like them, or their busincess practices, or their licences, cool, get something else. Vive la difference, non?Before everyone gets into a huff about this, you have to realize that Apple had to do this to survive. What iCommune did was basically create a iTunes-based Napster. Since RIAA has been suing every version of p2p they can track down, Apple stood to get involved in a huge lawsuit as well as being forced to change the way iTunes (and probably the iPod) works.
Basic survival intincts. Blame RIAA, not Apple.
"I drank what?" - Socrates
If you want "nice", use open source. While companies have profit motives that get in the way of quality and features, the interests of most open source developers are aligned with those of users because they are users.
I am kind of disappointed that Apple is bullying developers who promote their hardware and software for free. But I am not sure why you need plugin SDK for this project. iTunes writes its libraries and playlists as XML files. I wrote a tiny shell script to copy files in the playlist to my MP3 player, which acts as a USB hard drive. Why not just write a small web server that reads those XML files and lets others browse the files and listen to your playlists as streams?
Also, MacOSX has Samba and NFS in addition to Apple's own file sharing. On a local network, everyone can just export their MP3 collections and then just point MP3 players to the parent directory under which other collections are mounted. Should be even more transparent than the plugin.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
If you don't buy the quality argument, then you must never have owned a Mac. Go to the nearest Apple store and take a look at one. Get one of the employees to open it up, take a look at the insides. Feel it, examine the way it's put together. No flimsy plastic parts. Macs are made of magnesium, polycarbonate, titanium, or aircraft-grade aluminium. They're well-designed, well-built machines.
Feel a Mac's keyboard. Again, no cheap plastic parts. They're built to last. Take a look at an Apple-branded monitor. There is no brighter, sharper, more color-accurate LCD anywhere. Hell, even the mouse is an amazing work of engineering.
Here's just one example. Let me tell you how my Power Mac G4 is hooked up. The mouse is plugged into the keyboard (USB). The keyboard is plugged into the monitor (also USB). The monitor is plugged into the computer (ADC). The computer is plugged into the wall (power). That's it. There are no more cables. The monitor draws power from the computer over the ADC cable, so there's no need for a separate power plug. ADC also carries USB, so there's no need to run a long USB cable down to the floor for the keyboard and/or mouse. And both the monitor and the keyboard have two USB ports on them each, so when the need arises I can plug my digital camera or whatever directly into my keyboard, no muss or fuss.
This is some extremely well-thought-out stuff.
Then there's the thing about the OS, and how the Cocoa API's are the most powerful and yet easy-to-use API's for any operating system anywhere. But that's a whole other discussion entirely.
People who think Macs are really no different from PC's have never looked very closely at them.
I write in my journal
This is off the main page, and it's unlikely anyone will read this, but . . .
It's really been bothering me that this was modded as flamebait. That wasn't my intention, at all. I have an iBook, and I'm an Apple fan. I wasn't trying to troll, or cause any flamewars.
It just bugs me when I'm misunderstood, and I wanted to set the record straight.