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iPhone SDK and Free Software Don't Match
kookjr writes "Are you planning to develop software for the iPhone? If you want to develop Free Software, Linux.com (Shares corp overlord w/ Slashdot) has a good review of the conflicts between Apple's Registered iPhone Developer Agreement and licenses like the GPL. This is important for people who may not read all the agreements they click Agree to."
companies are issuing SDKs and don't tell you what license is actually compatible in a common sense, non-legalese way?
:)
It seems only logical that this should fall in the 'system requirements' type category of the install documentation...
Sure, when you start your car there is no beeping alarm and a warning sign to use ONLY unleaded gas, but then they go to extra efforts to warn you at the gas fill spot, and make the neck of the gas fill tube so that only unleaded fuel and siphon hoses will fit.
This license thing is like letting you believe you can pour diesel fuel right on in the tank, no worries.
I like car analogies
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It seems Apple haters are coming out of the wood work just to attack poor defenseless Apple! Apple does things they way they do them because they work. And the proof of that is illustrated perfectly in how cool and popular Apple stuff is... and by extension, anyone who uses Apple stuff is also cool and popular. So why can't people stop reading all these legal issues and get back to fun and sunshine!
I thought we already knew that the iPhone SDK license might be unfriendly to free software. It shouldn't really surprise anyone should it?
/. crowd as a whole probably does so far more than most demographics.
People should really read what they agree to but of course they don't most of the time. Of course, the
"...If you want to develop Free Software, Linux.com (Shares corp overlord w/ Slsahdot )..."
/. editors can't even spell their own name? Somebody should give them a pointy hat and make them go sit in the corner for a bit ;)
Wow,
The Not FUD: The iPhone is incompatible with GPLv3.
If you ask Apple, thats a feature.
If you ask the Free Software Foundation, thats a feature.
The Maby FUD: Is code which uses the iPhone APIs confidential information under the NDA? No answer yet.
The Total FUD: It only affects SOME Free liscences. Even if the APIs are confidential, this does NOT stop BSD code, but only viral liscences like GPL.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Enough said really, why should everything strive to be GPL compatible? I've often wondered this in the past when has its license suddenly decreed to be 'GPL incompatible' to a great outcry here on Slashdot, when at the same time the GPL itself doesn't strive for great compatibility with others.
This seems to conflict with GPL 3, but it's a stretch to say that it conflicts with v2. If I distribute code that uses an API, am I disclosing the API? IANAL so I guess someone could make that argument. I'm glad apple will be pushed to clarify this, but it's probably ok. Is Apple trying to make sure nobody ports an iphone app to the andriod ?
--- http://davidnehme.blogspot.com
Would you like some chips with that?
www.purevolume.com/martyd
Actually, GPLv2 MAY BE incompatible, if the answer is "code which uses the iPhone APIs contains confidential information". In that case, you could only distribute the code to other registered developers, not everyone, which means Berkeley liscence is fine but GPL is not.
Also, apple's method of distribution MAY BE GPLv2 incompatible, because Apple might not want to also be responsible for distributing the source code and some GPLv2 authors may not like derivitive works where a different party distributes the source code compared to the binary (because the developer could always host the code if its not confidential), and the GPLv2 as written says it is the binary distributer's responsibility to distribute the source code.
We don't know yet, but if the distribution is not GPLv2 friendly:
If you ask the Free Software Foundation, that would be a feature.
If you ask Apple, that would be a feature.
Test your net with Netalyzr
- Code signing - this conflicts with GPLv3's "anti-Tivoization" clause. As others posted, both sides will see this as a feature, not a bug.
- It's not "free". This is true; much as you cannot download the Tivo source code and have it compile and work on your Tivo, you cannot just download available source code and run it on your iPhone. This goes back to the signing issues above.
- NDA provisions. I'm willing to bet this is purely during the beta period. All of Apple's other tools, documentation, etc are freely available, and I expect this will continue once it is released. After all, signing up for this program gives access to beta software (the iPhone firmware 2.0), and Apple similarly restricts access to OS X and other beta software. Once it's final, these restrictions are lifted.
Ultimately, this all boils down to code signing and what you think of it. The problems presented by this are fairly specific to GPLv3; anyone is free to distribute their code under (for example) the MIT/BSD license, or even GPLv2.As for GPLv3 it's far from widespread, and with prominent projects such as the Linux kernel avoiding it, I'm not sure how much traction it will gain over GPLv2. Much like Windows Vista has to compete with XP, GPLv3 has to compete with GPLv2.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
I think you misspelled "BSD" or "MIT"...
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
Mmmmm, "Dancing for Nerds. Spicy food you pay for twice."
My work here is dung.
I keep getting asked if I'll port SimCity (Micropolis) to the iPhone.
Now I know the answer: NO! Because it's licensed under GPL 3.
It's a lot easier to port software to the Windows CE on the PocketPC, anyway. And then I can give it away for free, instead of charging for it and forking over money to Apple.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
There are three points of contention:
(1) You must have your application signed before it will run on any cell phone,
(2) Your application must be delivered via the Apple iTunes store, and
(3) Your usage of the beta version of Apple's development kit subjects you to an NDA.
Well, the NDA part of the beta program struck me as a little odd, as it takes about no effort for any idiot to sign up and download the SDK for free--however, this seems to be a standard tactic by Apple for all its beta SDKs. The NDA will be gone, however, by the time the SDK is out of beta--so the whole "you must sign an NDA and that is incompatible with the GPL" thing will be gone by summer.
So what is left is the fact that you have to sign your application before it will run on the iPhone.
As someone who has written cell phone software before, I can tell you that Symbian and Windows Mobile also require application signing before allowing your programs to run on their platforms. It's very common in the cell phone industry to use certificate signing--and at $99/year, Apple is the cheapest to obtain a signing key. Further, from the sounds of it, by the time the SDK goes out of beta, anyone with $99 can get a signing key and sign as many apps as he wishes. (By contrast, for Windows Mobile you pay VeriSign $350 for 10 signing events, meaning you can only sign 10 applications or different versions of the same application. (Actually a signing event means you sign one executable.) Symbian is even more of a pain in the neck. And let's not talk about Android until real Android-based phones start showing up on the market and we learn what sort of package signing requirements the cell phone manufacturers impose on Android applications.
While I appreciate the need for authors to fill column space in order to get paid, it seems to be a little early to start complaining about GPL incompatibility and pointing the fingers solely at Apple because you're too lazy to compare and contrast with the other mobile operating systems out there.
Not to completely debunk your post, but Apple charges a total of $0 for Xcode (the IDE for OSX) and associated tools, and lets you do whatever the hell you want with the resulting source and binaries.
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
I have great respect for the FSF and the goals they are trying to accomplish but when I see claims like, "But the result still would not qualify as free software, since no one could alter your source code and run the modified result on their phone," it irks me.
More accurately it would not meet the FSF's definition of free software. I would call freely released source code that I could load into the iphone simulator (or with $99 an iphone itself) free software. But whether or not you agree with my usage of the term isn't the point. 'Free software' is a term like 'free country.' It's part of the language and no one entity can dictate it's meaning just because it thinks that is what the term should mean.
To be clear I have no dispute with the FSF. Just as various activist groups might offer their own definitions of free countries that differ so too is it reasonable for the FSF to offer their own definition of free software and to try to convince us it is the correct one. However, journalistic pieces like the one at linux.com shouldn't assume that the FSF can define by fiat what words in our language mean. Instead they should tell us that this would not qualify as free software under the FSF definition.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
You do not has it.
+++ATH0
The Actual GPLv3 License says:
IANAL, but it looks to me like the only person who would be restricted from distributing GPLv3 code for the iPhone would be Apple, and even they could do so safely as long as they don't bundle it into the same transaction in which you buy the iPhone itself. You or I ought to be able to just provide a link to the source code in our app, or otherwise embed the source code in a readable fashion, and be safe from that clause while still distributing our app through iTunes.
So where's the problem Mr Smith?
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
we can still jailbreak, and there's no reason we can't continue to develop free software with the community toolchain.
+++ATH0
Look at IBM and the once IBM PC. By being open with their standards and rather loose licensing with Microsft killed the IBM PC Dominate market.
Well, the truth is a bit more complicated than that. IBM's opening up of the PC caused the PC market to expand overall, and IBM clearly benefited from the expansion of PCs. However, IBM made some big missteps along the way that caused its own offerings to gradually lose market share.
1) IBM was beaten to the punch by Compaq on the 386. That's a big ouch. IBM PC ATs were running 286's, which, really were a failed part. Compaq was way ahead of the curve on 386s. IBM, you see, was trying to hold 386s for some more "advanced" offerings and trying to defend the rest of its product line, but Compaq had no such inhibitions.
2) IBM really blew it with the PCjr. PCjr wasn't a bad home computer, but IBM was famous for its keyboards and the chiclet keyboard threw that advantage out the window.
3) IBM really blew it with PS/2. First, IBM closed off PS/2, trying to correct what they saw was a mistake in the PC. In other words, they weren't going to let anyone else do Microchannel motherboards. However, there was a huge aftermarket already for PC cards, and none of that would work with PS/2, so, instead, people went back to the likes of Compaq and Dell.
4) IBM really, really blew it with OS/2. IBM's original SDK prices for OS/2 were out of this world, and furthermore, IBM was already trying to tie OS/2 to its PS/2, frightening developers away with the promise of writing for only a hardware platform that nobody wanted.
The bottom line is, had IBM said that OS/2 would be open, and had shared PS/2 hardware specs with third parties and opened the platform up, quite likely, whatever bus we would be using would be called Microchannel Express, rather than PCI Express, and we would quite likely be running OS/2, rather than Windows.
The moral of the story is, when building hardware, open-ness matters. The more your hardware is open, the more people can connect to it, having partners making clones speeds the adoption of your technology, and it places you much more firmly in the driver's seat. Sure, Apple might look good by making IPhones as closed appliances, but you can bet that when Microsoft finally gets its act together, and rallies around a dozen hardware vendors along a common platform, then Apple is going to get smoked, just as it was when, well, PCs slaughtered Apple the first time around.
This is my sig.
Summary of the article: "Only GPLv3 is Free Software. Anything without an anti-TiVoization clause is unfree. Also, dual licensing does not exist."
Avoid it always.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
The Total FUD: It only affects SOME Free liscences. Even if the APIs are confidential, this does NOT stop BSD code, but only viral liscences like GPL.
The GPL quite clearly says that the OS can be under whatever license it wants to be. GPL'ed software runs on SunOS, Solaris, Windows, AIX, Symbian, and lots of other systems with weird licenses. GPL software does not infect software that isn't derived from it in some way.
The problem here is that Apple is trying to be viral and infect software that they did not develop. The GPLv3 just says that it won't allow itself to be infected by viral corporate licenses.
I've owned about a dozen Macs over the years. I'm so pissed of about Apple's recent bullshit that I'm not going to buy another Apple product until they change or hell freezes over.
I've seen a lot of tech demos. I've seen alot of prototypes. And yet, the iPhone for all of its closed terrible-ness is the most advanced piece of technology I've ever seen- and it gets better... I own one. Its in my hand. I use it every day. This isn't something we drool over and fantasize about owning some day, this is extremely attainable.
The point is that while I am a FSF and EFF supporter, GPL still doesn't deliver with jaw-dropping results. Apple does. The open movement was created largely in response to advanced technology being kept out-of-reach of average consumers ($5000/seat UNIX comes to mind) largely out of ignorance on the part of the companies developing the software.
Today, we have Apple solidly delivering to the consumer what many are calling *the* next platform, and the GPL community is throwing stones. Meanwhile Android has failed to be more than 'cute' and certainly nothing to write home about.
Finally, the GPL community needs to gain perspective. Would it be nice to have a few GPL projects one iPhone? Sure. Will I miss their absence? Not a chance. This is *not* a desktop, this is a digital prosthetic. If the FSF is hoping to pressure Apple to change policy, stop now. Instead look at changing GPL to accommodate a company that is (in its own way) delivering on the goals that FSF was created to accomplish.
GPL is not just incompatible with iPhone. (L)GPL is also incompatible with proprietary development environments on game consoles such as PlayStation 3, Wii etc (except for PS3 Linux obviously).
Just use the Zlib license and feel flattered if people consider using your software. Even if they don't give credit. Even if they don't contribute back.
Some will contribute back or give credit voluntary, even through they are not required by the license.
You can publish your source code, just avoid re-distributing proprietary technology.