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Apple Pulls VLC Media Player From AppStore
An anonymous reader writes "Apple has removed VLC media player from the App Store, putting an end to the controversy on the license (in)compatibilities. Indeed, the iTunes page for VLC media player stopped working. VLC developer Rémi Denis-Courmont notes that he is 'not going to pity the owners of iDevices, and not even the MobileVLC developers who doubtless wasted a lot of their time. This end should not have come to a surprise to anyone.'"
a glimpse of the future - when the only way to get "apps" on any computer have to come from the company store.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Still, good to know I was right to not bother with the iOS platform. Its fine for some people and I dont dismiss their choice, but I want better developer support in my mobile devices.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I was a Mac user until recently, and an Apple II user before I started with Macs. But lately, I just absolutely refuse to use anything with their brand on it because of this precise behavior.
All I ask is that the device I pay for allow me to use it as I please instead of requiring the company's permission for each little chunk of code that executes. Give me just that and I'll be happy to buy.
Google is starting to eat Apple's lunch on mobile phones and will do so on the desktop/laptop/tablet if they try to exert such tight control over what their users do on their larger devices. They got away with it on the mobile phones because their interface was so far ahead of anyone else when they got started.
You are very wrong IMHO, my non-geek mother now can't view 99% of her video files, and lots of other users will have to go through a very painful process of re-encoding their videos (which can take a lot of time and cpu resources better spent on their casual tasks).
You must have seen different commercials then. Video playback is a major selling point.
INAL, but I wonder why the developer couldn't offer the identical software through separate, more open channels in addition to the appStore, thus satisfying the GPL even though the appStore distribution channel in itself does not satisfy the GPL?
VLC is a nice player on the desktop but there are far more superior solutions for the iPhone/iPad like AirVideo that isn't swamped in petty GPL politics. Plus the VLC interface on the iPhone was pretty bad. I'd be concerned if it was the only game in town. Otherwise, it's a non-story. This is VLC's loss.
It reminds me of Mozilla's backwards, dogmatic horseshit about supporting "open source" and not getting on the h.264 bandwagon with the rest of the grownups, all the while enabling the extremely user-hostile and proprietary Flash. Now their share is slowly being chipped away by Chrome which suffers from none of the political idiocy that comes with some FOSS projects.
Moving on.
This has nothing to do with Apple, rather with VLC. Not sure why people are hating on Apple for this.
It's built into the OS and it's Quicktime(scaled down). Apple won't make a competitor to VLC because VLC played many formats that Apple won't bother supporting due to no hardware acceleration. This is why Apple supports only a small set of codecs and bitrates. The A4 chip in the iPad and iPhone 4 has specific hardware for decoding this codec up to a certain bitrate.
The App Store imposes additional restrictions on what users can do with the apps. The GPL, which is used by VLC, prohibits additional restrictions. So it is impossible to legally distribute VLC (or any derivative work) through the App Store.
What the hell do Apple think they are anyway?
People who respect software licenses when the license holders request software be removed from their store?
But lately, I just absolutely refuse to use anything with their brand on it because of this precise behavior.
You refuse to use Apple because when someone issues a copyright challenge against an App Apple actually listens and removes it from the store?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They guy who requested VLC be pulled works for Nokia. So you do the math as to why Apple was asked to remove an app Nokia had power over...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There's a lot of spin here. Apple pulled this at the request of a developer, over concerns of the GPL-licensed components contained in VLC. A lot of folks were surprised that VLC even made it the store, as App Store rules pretty much violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the GPL. Apple was more than happy to keep VLC in the store, but everyone is very happy to spin them as evil yet again. Not that they haven't done some tacky things with App Store takedowns, but really that seems to be more and more a thing of the past.
For more info on the reasons VLC was pulled, check out this Engadget article, just one of many articles out there that reports the truth of the issue.
As a side note, I love VLC; it does a lot on the Mac mini hooked to my HDTV. It's absolutely essential on Linux. But the iOS version was not that great. The one thing I use VLC for more than anything is its network streaming capabilities (remember, it's the Video LAN Client, first and foremost), and this feature didn't make it to the iOS version. So I never used it. Yeah, it's good to have to play videos that QuickTime can't handle, but I've never had occasion to view such videos on my iPhone or iPad. And if I have to use iTunes to load the videos onto my iPhone or iPad, that means the videos are on my computer, where I am more likely to watch them (with the OS X version of VLC, or QuickTime with Perian).
:q!
One of the developers, Rémi Denis-Courmont, was calling on Apple to allow users to use VLC in the manner that the GPL requires. However Apple decided that they would rather remove VLC from the repository than modify their ToS to allow developers to set their own licensing terms.
You're talking so much shit I don't know where to start.
Apple has a built-in 'player app' for iOS devices. For the iPad and iPod touch it's the video app, and for iPhone it's the iPod app.
So Apple aren't releasing a new 'player app' to compete with VLC. It's already there.
Secondly, the app was taken down at the request of one of VLC's code developers. Apple complied with that request.
Lastly, the VLC app in it's current form should never have been submitted anyway. It comes with licensing restrictions that aren't compatible with the terms of the App store.
The developers should have known this, and likely did, but submitted the app anyway knowing that distribution via the App store violated their own licence.
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
The app store already is GPLv2 friendly, as long as you don't charge for the app. They amended the licence conditions/ToS after the first GPL run-in before the VLC one to specifically make it friendly to GPLv2.
This is merely them responding to a VLC dev demanding that Apple remove the app from the store - and they complied, and somehow this makes them evil and the masters of some conspiracy to squash OSS.
On second thoughts, who do the developers of the VLC app think they are, submitting an app to a store knowing full well that the licensing terms of that store would violate their own licensing terms.
Whether that is the case or not is very much debatable. Apple quite clearly says that if you download third party applications through their store, any license agreement is between you and the developer. Apple provides a free download service, and that service is limited. That has nothing to do with the license agreement between you and the developer.
It's not "instead". Rather, corporations and government cooperate more and more closely. It's called "fascism", and it's how the Nazi state functioned.
And Apple can't fix anything by modifying an agreement, as it's not their license that's in question, it's the GPL. They'd actually have to restructure how their content distribution system works.
Nonsense. The problem is a licensing problem, not a content distribution problem. If Apple would fix their licenses, the problem would go away, even if their app store couldn't actually implement the more permissilve licenses.
It's open source isn't it. There's no such thing as "coming real soon now". You can get it NOW if you know how to use git.
Will it work? Maybe. Would it be better to wait until the official full release ? Probably, if you want a somewhat bug free version.
The point is, it is available for Android in pre-release and will eventually be available in general release form. It will not (ever) be available for iOS.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
Rémi Denis-Courmont is a Nokia employee and it is possible that someone and Nokia put him up to this. If this is the case then there could be a violation of EU competition law.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
App reviewers do not do a code review - they just run the app. How would an app reviewer know there was a licence dispute until they were told?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
the only reason he hasn't is continued rumors of iPhone on VZ.
Then he should be pretty happy next Tuesday.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In the very end , the manufacturer are not given the CHOICE of using iOS. And the market share of the Operating system iOS and Android doesn't have to be interpreted differently. The bottom line is that if in the end the market share of Android is much greater than the one of apple (and long term I think it will if only by the virtue it is available for everybody) then developper will migrate to where they can get a greater market share for their apps (or do both market). This is also the reason why even if MAC were a better operating system, in the end windows with all its incompatible machine, video driver, and other sheenanigan, got the lion share of personal application.
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The GPL is to blame. It's fundamentally incompatible with the app store's terms of service. The app store terms forbid you from sharing apps you downloaded from it, even if they are free. The GPL does not recognize pointing people to a free download on the app store as the re-distribution that it wants to enforce to be possible.
No, the GPL isn't to blame at all. What is to blame is a developer who has apparently developed a hatred against Apple (which may be related to his employer being Nokia), making legal threats, and claiming that his copyright is infringed.
Apple makes very, very clear that any GPL software in the app store is distributed under the GPL license, and that any legal relationship is between the developers submitting the software and the end user receiving the software. Apple just provides a service to allow users to download software. That service has limitations. And it isn't easy for the end user to distribute further, but it is possible, and Apple doesn't disallow it.
However, the spirit of the GPL software is that anybody should be able to get the source code, adapt it, and use the modified software. Here we have a developer who actively prevents people from doing just that. You can argue all you want about app store rules and walled gardens and so on, but this guy clearly does not want people to have the freedom to modify software that he participated in developing and to make it work on the device that they want it to work on.
Imagine Stallman had bought an iPhone.
What am I missing, if anything? What exactly is it that blocks GPL on the App Store?
The problem is that one of the copyright holders has told Apple that making this application available for downloading would infringe on his copyright.
We have here three different parties: The copyright holder, the developer, and Apple. If Apple is told by the copyright holder that the copy is infringing, then in most cases outside GPL we would assume that the copyright holder should know whether someone has the right to put an application on the store or not. Here we have the rare situation where the question is reasonably open. But Apple will not want to get involved in this copyright fight, which is why they drop the application.
I think the only way to get this application onto the store would be to sue the developer to declare that this would not be copyright infringement.
We need to remember, it's Apple on AT&T vs. Google on AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and just about everyone else. I think you are going to see a sea of people go with the iPhone once it is available on Verizon.
Also, Android is the less expensive option. There are regular 2 for 1 deals... and also crazy 29.99 deals with Google. You just aren't going to see that with the iPhone.