FSF Asks Apple To Comply With the GPL For Clone of GNU Go

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The Free Software Foundation has discovered that an application currently distributed in Apple's App Store is a port of GNU Go. This makes it a GPL violation, because Apple controls distribution of all such programs through the iTunes Store Terms of Service, which is incompatible with section 6 of the GPLv2. It's an unusual enforcement action, though, because they don't want Apple to just make the app disappear, they want Apple to grant its users the full freedoms offered by the GPL. Accordingly, they haven't sued or sent any legal threats and are instead in talks with Apple about how they can offer their users the GPLed software legally, which is difficult because it's not possible to grant users all the freedoms they're entitled to and still comply with Apple's restrictive licensing terms."

Comments

Fat Chance

[dward90]

Apple will pull the app from the store LONG before they allow actual open software to slip through their stranglehold on content.

Re:Fat Chance

[TheRaven64]

Well, not exactly. The GPL is a distribution license. Without it, you may not copy the work at all, as per copyright law. That means that everyone in an electronic distribution chain must comply with the GPL, because each one is making a copy. Apple is making a copy of a copyrighted work every time that someone downloads something from the store.

There is almost certainly a clause in the developer agreement saying that you will indemnify Apple against legal costs caused by distributing your app, but this is where it gets interesting. If Apple has distributed something derived from GPL'd code, without complying with the terms of the GPL, then they are liable for copyright infringement (for profit, potential large statutory fine). They could then recoup this cost by suing the developer, but I imagine that the developer probably can't afford the fine and that the amount of bad press it would generate for Apple in the developer community would make it not worth their while.