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Open Source VLC Media Player Coming To iPad
Stoobalou writes "The people behind VLC, quite probably the most useful media player available right now, have submitted an iPod version to the Apple software police. VLC — which is rightfully famous for having a go at playing just about any kind of audio or video file you care to throw at it — should appear some time next week, if it makes it through the often unfathomable approval process implemented by Apple. The Open Source Video Lan Client has been tweaked to run on the iPod by software developer Applidium."
You can release the source code. You just can't distribute the binary, since you can't satisfy the conditions of the GPL and of the statically linked platform libraries.
Although there is an exception in the GPL to allow linking to libraries that are part of the OS, or are normally distributed with it. Things like the standard C runtime library fall under that. Maybe this applies here.
there's a divx/xvid player already on the store. it's shit, but it was approved
http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/id384098375?mt=8
RTFOA:
http://applidium.com/en/news/vlc_media_player_available_for_the_ipad
For a start: user interface guidelines (which really can make the difference between app approval and rejection), and also OS infrastructure and frameworks (the iPad can support popups/overlays that the iPhone and iPod Touch can't -- Apple added those API calls to the iPad only, because the iPad display is large enough for that sort of thing to make sense).
For another: the iPad can actually act as a USB host (though you need a physical adapter to do it, the circuitry is in there), letting you use stuff like USB keyboards (and a USB bar code scanner -- I've used one myself), and no other iOS device has the necessary hardware at this time.
It's popular to say "it's just a big iPod Touch", and there are elements of truth to that, but it's not really completely accurate.
backwards? More like 100% wrong. Apple has no such requirements. If you own the source code, you can do whatever you want with it, including licensing it under multiple licenses. The individual who ported GNU Go to the iPhone did not own the source code and the FSF has an opinion on what exactly can (and can't) be done with their source code.
I'm not sure you've read the developer agreement closely enough. You're allowed to do open source, explicitly. Download the latest version of the agreement right now, and look at section 3.3.20. Right there it says essentially "using FOSS is completely okay, as long as you can follow all the rules in this document and all the rules in the applicable FOSS license at the same time".
The FSF certainly says that the app store is incompatible with the GPL. They also say people should never use GPLv2, just GPLv3. The GPLv3 has an anti-TiVoization clause. Heck, read it in the FSF's own words right here:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/rms-why-gplv3.html
Focus on the sixth paragraph. That makes the GPLv3 incompatible with the App Store (or with appliances like the TiVo) in ways that simply do not apply to the GPLv2.
(I researched this a bunch while kicking around the idea of taking the last version of Emacs that was under GPLv2 instead of GPLv3 and porting that to the iPad. I ultimately decided against it, but not for reasons of license compatibility.)
I have a problem, I answer rhetorical questions even though I know they are.
My abacus is can represent 13 decimal digits. The binary number required to do that is 44 bits. So my abacus is can store about 5 1/2 bytes.