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

Re:Wrong People

[PipsqueakOnAP133]

O RLY?
What's preventing the developers from posting source on their web site like the other GPL apps on the app store?

Re:I know what I would do.

[Arker]

If I were Apple, I would just pull the app and call it done.

Although the FSF tends to be far too kind, the fact is copyright law doesnt work that way. They are still on the hook for infringement already committed - or at least could be, if the copyright holders want to pursue it.

Re:I know what I would do.

[hedwards]

Regardless of what the agreement might say, Apple is still on the hook for infringement. Considering the level of vetting that they give to applications going in and the number that have been blocked due to non-obvious problems, they're not going to be able to plead ignorance.

This is reminscint of "Sita Sings the Blues"

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The producer of the full-length, animated movie "Sita Sings the Blues" recently found herself in a similar situation.
She had an eye-opening experience when she went to license the music in the movie (from the 1920s) and found out that it cost $50K for the rights and another $20K for the lawyers to do the clearance work - for recordings that are in the public domain (but the lyrics are not).

Because of that she decided to release the movie under the Creative Commons Share-Alike license - which, I believe, is the version most like the GPL(and she also took out a loan for the music rights). The movie has been very popular, Roger Ebert raved about it, even the guys on his old TV show (now called "At the Movies") gave it high marks. So eventually Netflix came a-calling, they offered her something like $7K up front for the right to stream the movie. However, she insisted that they stream it without DRM and their system is just not set up to do that, it's like they never conceived of the idea of Free content when they designed it. Kinda ironic in retrospect because I'd be really surprised if, just like most of the interwebs, a whole lot of netflix's infrastructure didn't run on Free software,

Anyway, she was willing to compromise - she would grant an exception to the licensing terms and they could DRM it, if they would run a placard at the start of the movie telling viewers that it was Free and where to get it from. No dice said Netflix. So she no dice too.

So, my bet is that Apple goes the same way as netflix - unwilling to compromise because their world view has no room in it for Free software for regular users.

BTW:
Sita Sings the Blues - main site
Download page - including bittorrent of a very nice 4GB 1080p mkv, also streaming from Youtube, etc
IMDB Page
Ebert's review