FSF Rattles Tivo Saber At Apple

Posted by kdawson on Monday July 2, 2007 @09:32PM from the interesting-to-try-and-prove-that dept.

Ohreally_factor takes us back to Friday when both the iPhone and the GPLv3 were released. "This article at Tectonic suggests that Apple's iPhone might run afoul of the GPL. Peter Brown, executive director of the FSF is quoted as saying: 'Today, Steve Jobs and Apple release a product crippled with proprietary software and digital restrictions: crippled, because a device that isn't under the control of its owner works against the interests of its owner. We know that Apple has built its operating system, OS X, and its web browser Safari, using GPL-covered work — it will be interesting to see to what extent the iPhone uses GPLed software.' Might there really be GPLed code in the iPhone? It's well known that OS X built on BSD, which of course uses the BSD license. Webkit is based on KHTML which uses the LGPL."

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"Run afoul?" by mr_matticus · 2007-07-02 21:38 · Score: -1, Redundant

Since when does the *use* of (L)GPL software in a product (anyone's product, even, say, the Zune), make it run afoul of the (L)GPL? Seems to me that since the content-free accusation pertains to GPL v3 (which, as we all know, was released on the same day as the iPhone), it's just another crappy Slashdot story. Nothing the iPhone has on it (or any other consumer device introduced this past month) has GPL v3 software in it.

Mentioning WebKit in the summary is also quite the ballsy move, since Apple's WebKit contributions to KHTML are among the biggest known returns to "free" software by a proprietary Fortune 500 company.