Slashdot Mirror
Android Devices Are Hives of License Violations
inkscapee writes "Android developers are paying little attention to Free/Open Source software licenses and have a 71% violation rate. Come on folks, FOSS licenses are easy to comply with, certainly easier than proprietary software licenses, and less punitive. But it seems even the tiny hoops that FOSS requires are too much for devs eager to cash in."
Cool. So Google's motto is "Do no evil, but don't get in the way of letting others do it."
The article doesn't mention Android separately. It has one set of numbers for both Android and iOS. Exact quote:
A new study from open source services vendor OpenLogic reports that 71 percent of Apple iOS and Google Android apps are not in compliance. OpenLogic scanned 635 apps, including both free and paid on the Apple App store and Google Android Marketplace. Of those 635 scanned apps, 52 apps include Apache licensed code while 16 included GPL/LGPL licensed code.
Who the hell wrote that summary?
It may be 7 digits, but at least it's a semiprime
The article actually states "A new study from open source services vendor OpenLogic reports that 71 percent of Apple iOS and Google Android apps are not in compliance." Way to leave out 1/2 of the article.
...that a CS degree should require you to pass the bar exam before you write code.
Link against a library (even unintentionally) and the hell of reading license legalese begins.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Wait a minute here, the linked article says "A new study from open source services vendor OpenLogic reports that 71 percent of Apple iOS and Google Android apps are not in compliance." Yet the headline for this story mentions only Android. I understand it's become fashionable to bash Android lately, but this seems a bit egregious. The problem appears to be endemic across all mobile devices.
How does 52 apps out of 635 add up to 71%??
Actually I find the Copy left licences have far more demands than any commercial licence. You can spend huge amounts of time figuring out if you can link or not link, how you must publish the code and how you can distribute the application.
With commercial software you are often presented with a library or set of tools you can or can't bundle with your product, past that there is no code to deal with most of the time..
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
I agree with this person's sentiment. It makes me a bad person, but it's at least true. I have found software I wrote with an open source license used with the license stripped. I can't afford an attorney so I use the sour grapes model to get over myself. It works pretty darned good. Lets me get on with life*.
*: your inevitable life joke is hilarious. har.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Wouldn't jumping through tiny hoops be harder?
Pardon my lack of understanding, but if this software is free, why do I have to tell you when I'm using it? Why do you care if I tell you vs not?
Scum and Villainy and all that.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
This title/summary really must be changed. It's clearly trying to establish a relationship between this and Oracle in the 'base platform', when the article is basically 'random application developers for *any* platform don't pay close attention to the license terms'.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Actually I find the Copy left licences have far more demands than any commercial licence. You can spend huge amounts of time figuring out if you can link or not link, how you must publish the code and how you can distribute the application.
As a commercial software developer myself, I'm glad at least one other person on Slashdot understands this!
For some of us, copyleft code is, by far, the most expensive code there is. In fact, it's pretty much poison.
I think this is about the apps, but what about the platform? Honeycomb devices are out there in the wild, thanks to retail sales of Motorola Xoom. But is the source code for the released Honeycomb available yet? Rumors of "exclusivity agreements" floating around? Come on, Google, play it straight.
[
Anyone know what the statistics are for violation rates outside the mobile market?, or on other devices? I don't find the statistic provided really surprising though, since there are less options to protect your code. with free code you could run it through an obfuscator. Are legal options the only ones available to opensource projects to protect your code?
God-damn, yet another misunderstanding of L/GPL? If I make an app where I can throw birds at pigs that happens to use a GPL'ed JSON library, it doesn't mean that the whole app has to be open-sourced does it?
Whereas if I take GNU Chess and put a pretty UI on top of it, that's a derivative product, and I do need to provide the source.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Come on folks, FOSS licenses are easy to comply with, certainly easier than proprietary software licenses, and less punitive.
Really? You mean like not only complying with the letter of the license but having to receive all sorts of flak and hatred if you happen to violate all the unwritten rules and the "spirit" of the license? To be honest, it's FAR easier to comply with proprietary licenses because they don't have all the political baggage behind them.
From the press release for the study:
OpenLogic found that among the applications that use the Apache or GPL/LGPL licenses, the compliance rate was only 29%. Android compliance was 27% and iPhone/iOS compliance was 32%. Overall compliance of Android applications using the GPL/LGPL was 0%.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Generally, with proprietary licenses: If you have access to the code, you are allowed to use the code however you want. If you don't have any rights to the code, your employer hasn't negotiated a license, and so you will never see the code.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Well, that was the original intent. RMS envisioned a world in which all software was Free (Libre), and then he thought about how this could be brought about. What he came up with was two-pronged. 1) copyleft 2) write lots of really excellent software, so excellent that people will want to use it even though they know they will get sucked into the copyleft. It appears to be working.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
I wouldn't go as far as "poison", but the GPL mission is clearly is more important than the efforts of the people who write the GPLed code, ie its aims must win out over the aims and IP of the creative contributors. For example, if I want to make my code easy to use commercially, then using or publishing code under a BSD licence is far easier than GPL. IMHO.
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
Honestly, as a developer I've never bothered with FOSS because I can't grok the licenses for the life of me. It's all bizarre legalese and I always feel like I'm going to be backed into a corner by something I don't understand. Easier and more convenient to just go with the proprietary stuff.
I smell a scam.
71% are in violation? Really? They scanned every app in the both stores?
This I feel says it all.
"OpenLogic sells a product called the OLEX App Store Edition which provides tooling that can be used by developers to do a self-service scan on their apps prior to submitting to the app store and by app stores to track open source compliance."
I would love to scan my app. I wrote 100% of the code except what I linked from Apple. I think the method may be flawed.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
top experts explain as "predictable" open source service provider OpenLogic, charged with ensuring companies remain as terrified as is humanly possible about the threat of cancer-like, communist free software made a daunting proclamation. OpenLogic insists that most, if not every bit of software in the latest trendy open-source ecosystem is rife with non-compliance. this veritable tower of babel may crash down upon those who do not stop to panic long enough to purchase OpenLogic products and services, with disasterous effects that may or may not, kill your cat.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Actually I find the Copy left licences have far more demands than any commercial licence. You can spend huge amounts of time figuring out if you can link or not link, how you must publish the code and how you can distribute the application.
As a commercial software developer myself, I'm glad at least one other person on Slashdot understands this!
For some of us, copyleft code is, by far, the most expensive code there is. In fact, it's pretty much poison.
Which was the intent, free to extend, not so free to commercialize. TANSTAAFL
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Slashdot
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Is there scum and villainy too?
WHAT?
You can spend huge amounts of time figuring out if you can link or not link, how you must publish the code and how you can distribute the application.
One guy in the world whom speaks your native language has to do that one time for each version of each license, pretty much.
You can't seriously claim that every time you use a line of BSD'd or GPL'd code, you reread and reanalyze the entire license, even if it hasn't changed?
Also legal jargon is not a strictly interpreted sourcecode. But, none the less, its semi-logical and fairly straightforward. If the GPL mystifies you for a "huge amount of time" then I shiver to imagine how long it takes to figure out a "hello world" (unless you're doing it in intercal or whitespace, etc)
Code that is written under "some random loons license" is probably either very special in which case you don't care how long it takes, or there is a (probably better) BSD and/or GPL version out there to be used.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Re:IANAL
I ANAL too. But this being an Apple related story, it is expected.
Isn't this just an attempt to get publicity for the scanner?
Not sure why you're modded Funny because your statement pretty much matches my experience.
I've found commercial licenses far easier to deal with than GPL, and that alone is why our company doesn't bother with anything that has GPL attached to it, its just not worth the effort.
Generally, there are BSD licensed equivilents of the major GPL libraries anyway so why screw with it?
Even Apples licensing is far easier to deal with than GPL, its just a minefield.
I realize I'm picking on GPL, but its true of just about all Copy-left licenses, which are most of the time more restrictive than commercial licenses I've dealt with.
Its sad that its far cheaper overall for our company to pay 100k in licensing fees than to use a copy-left license.
I'm sure I'll get marked as a troll but the reality of it is, copy-left is a fucking pain in the ass unless you are also copy-left. More software isn't than is.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I'm sure you understand this then, but obviously many people don't: If you don't understand the terms then don't use it.
It seems to me that people will go well out of their way to use free instead of paying for commercial libraries. Even though cost wise they'll end up paying way more in time and trouble. And how many times have I heard "I'm not paying $xx for a graphing library! We'll just write one ourselves."
If you read the article aside from the summary leaving out iOS this is all really an advertisement to sell you a product from OpenLogic called OpenLogic Exchange (OLEX).
http://www.openlogic.com/products/olex.php
This product will certify your source code is compliant after it scans it...
no-one cares...
once copyright holders start suing everyone for millions of dollars and the courts are clogged with GPL cases then maybe people will stop treating it as open season on GPL code. Until then, who really is surprised.
Someone else may have already had this idea, but maybe we could hire SCO to hunt down and litigate FOSS license violators.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
The thing about attributions and Apache License are at least part BS. The Apache license (which I just re-read) only requires attributions when a DERIVATIVE work is distributed. In most cases, I'm betting that companies are not distributing derivative works, but the original work. It's a hole in the license, but that't not the user's fault.
...that a CS degree should require you to pass the bar exam before you write code.
Given that the article refers to scanning 635 apps of which 68 contain OSS licensed code and then uses this data to claim that 71% of apps are not in compliance I would say that basic arithmetic would be the first thing to require before worrying about more challenging topics like laws.
good god, you're trolling, right? "lots of really excellent software"??? since when did stallman write lots of really excellent software? i'm forced into using gnu tools and frankly i'd rather not. let's take gfortran, which i have to use on a regular basis, and compare it with a closed-source alternative like ifort. which one produces larger filesizes and worse-optimised codes? oh yes, gfortran. which one doesn't support the full range of switches ifort does? oh yes, gfortran. and believe me, ifort is a fucking dog and i've been frequently let down and exasperated by its many bugs and interesting "features" including one severe bug in a version about five years back that capped memory usage at something like 1.5gig and if you addressed anything more seg faulted on you no matter that another 5gig were free on the system. despite all these frustrations, gfortran is a piece of shit. "but it's a work in progress!" so what? seriously, SO FUCKING WHAT? i don't want a work in progress, i want something that will do my fucking job and gfortran is seriously not fucking fit for purpose.
oh, and let's mention openmp and mpi support... no, let's not. late to the game again, gnu. let's not even mention how long it took (what, 10 years?) for a stable gnu release of an f90 compiler. seriously, did we have to wait ten years for a properly stable free f90 compiler? no. no, we didn't. but gnu -- authors of that widely-used EXCELLENT piece of software, the HURD kernel which is running in... wait... fucking NONE of the servers or desktops or laptops you'll ever see because it's fucking shit vaporware -- managed to make it last that long. someone even forked the fucker and made g95, which is equally shit.
or are we talking linux? oh, sorry, you're a fucking stallwart aren't you? gnu/linux. maybe we should be REALISTIC about this and call it gnome/gnu/linux or kde/gnu/linux because almost everyone who touches the fucker outside of a server environment will interact with it via gnome or kde one way or another and any claims to the contrary are retarded. you know the only reason gnu is in there? because it's free. not because it's EXCELLENT but because it's free, and enough monkeys have hammered at gcc over the years to make it more or less fit for purpose. is gnome from gnu? no. is kde? no. fuck it, is X from gnu? like fuck is it.
stallman is, ultimately, a self-obsessed prick with a towering sense of self-righteousness, supported by a bunch of moronic fucking zombies online. fuck the lot of you.
ps: the use of the word "copyleft" would be a fucking capital crime if i ever ran the world, along with "herstory". i fucking HATE things like that, they're always coined by some fucking smug cunt who smirks and preens as if to say "oooooh look how CLEVER i am with that bit of wordplay come and lick my balls!" except of course that most people who say "herstory" don't have balls what with being girls and all. but it's the same thing as people who fucking insist on using "her" and "she" as general pronouns rather than "he" and "him". fucking hell. if you really have to drop gender use "they" and "them", what fucking good does SWAPPING the gender do? PRICKS.
> Actually I find the Copy left licences have far more demands than any
> commercial licence. You can spend huge amounts of time figuring
No. Not really.
Either what you're doing with the code is a derivative work or not. That's pretty clearly spelled out in the license.
If it's a derivative work, then it needs to be licensed just like whatever you're deriving from.
It's like "inheritance" is suddenly a mystery just because it's "legal".
This all gets hashed out every time some "gimme gimme, it's all mine" type of developer whines about this.
Whining about how "hard" licensing is just just a lame excuse to try and ignore it much the same as any other attempt to bother paying attention to finer details including engineering, security and usability.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Of course you see "far more demands" in free software licenses than in "any commercial license". After all, while in FLOSS licenses the copyright owners have to specify clearly that you can in fact use, copy,distribute, share, alter and even sell the software while typical proprietary licenses state that you can't do anything at all with them. The latter is pretty clear, while the former may not be to some people.
But nevertheless you are wrong. Typical proprietary software licenses extend for multiple pages, where some pretty outrageous demands are put in place. For example, I've took the time to read a license of a PDF reader that was installed by default on my Android phone and burried in the details it is said that by installing that app I agreed to grant the software distributor or any representative of theirs the right to not only enter my house whenever they see fit but also let them confiscate any electronic device in my house so they can audit them and search for unauthorized copies. I defy you to find any clause in any FLOSS license that imposes any demand which is more outrageous than this.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
As a computing professional, I find all of this whining about Free Software license complexity rather embarrassing frankly.
Electronic Arts and Oracle can manage navigating this "quagmire". Why can't you?
One really wonders what an SBA audit of you whiners would turn up.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Funny, the GPLv2 and v3 are actually shorter than pretty much every EULA I've had the misfortune of stopping to look at. I'm sure your lawyers could do a cursory reading for you, otherwise what are you paying them for?
Most people who have a "problem" with the GPL are people who wish they could just jack the code and contribute nothing back and get whiny when they find that they can't. They then lash out against the people behind such licenses and the people that use them, because they're grumpy that they have to play by the rules instead of getting a free ride.
there is a debt.
copy-left is a fucking pain in the ass unless you are also copy-left
That's pretty much the point.
When hundreds of tablets and "eReaders" are being released with Android, Busybox, and of course the Linux kernel itself in violation of the GPL by companies who disclaim responsibility for the devices they sell, why should we be surprised to see application developers doing the same? Go ahead and try to get the source that you are legally entitled to when you buy one of these things! You'll be astounded how quickly whatever it is goes from being an extraordinary achievement of that corporation's innovation in the market and becomes an orphaned rebadge from China whose lineage cannot be traced.
And good luck trying to get a hold of the OEM in China! They'll simply ignore any emails or letters you send them, if indeed that company is even around any more with the legal shell corporation games that get played to avoid any possibility of a real warranty. Application developers have been watching these things.
They've seen just how serious we've been about enforcing the GPL and taken steps accordingly.
Really why should we be surprised?
Have a Virgin Mobile USA smartphone? Give VMRoms.com a try!
Oops, that's ambigious language.
copy-left is a fucking pain in the ass unless you are also copy-left
That's pretty much the intention.
An automated scanner? 71% sounds very high. How do we know here are not false positives? (Certainly the article wasn't critical)
Most small companies have lawyers on contract, i.e. they pay them per service. You have to be pretty big to afford having lawyers on salary that are just sitting around waiting for you to send them licenses to read through.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
OpenLogic sells a product called the OLEX App Store Edition which provides tooling that can be used by developers to do a self-service scan on their apps prior to submitting to the app store and by app stores to track open source compliance.
I don't doubt that violations are occurring, but I question data when not provided by an independent third party.
First, a lot of the GPL is open to interpretation. Same goes for pretty much any other license. For example, does a GUI wrapper that calls your GPLed tool fall under the category of a derivative work? It's not at all clear from the license. On the one hand, it uses public interfaces exclusively. On the other hand, it is wholly dependent on the tool for functionality. So it's legally fuzzy.
Second, GPLv3 is a whole different animal, so there's the question of whether somebody who is using the v2 version might move to v3 at a later date (in which case if you're depending on the differences, you'd be screwed).
Third, all licenses must be interpreted based on case law, which is a continuously changing field. What might be assumed to be acceptable could suddenly become unacceptable. This is why the license clarification process requires an ongoing dialog between the people making commercial use of a piece of software and the people who produce that software.
So no, it isn't one person doing it one time for each version of the license. People who deal with intellectual property law would kill for a license so precisely worded that such a thing was possible.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Nobody follows proprietary licensing either. Nobody reads either, even developers.
If you use a piece of Free Software in your software product and then distribute that product and you fail to follow the license then the folks that wrote that particular piece of software have you by the nuts. You might not like whining, but I can guarantee you that you'll like litigation a lot less. Especially because you will lose, and the penalties for copyright violation are ridiculous (at least in the U.S.). Assuming, of course, that the folks that wrote the Free Software that you "borrowed" actually care, which is probably not the case.
In fact, in this particular case the article is basically about a company that scans people's software for them, finds out if they have any licensing issues, and then offers to help you sort the licensing issues out if they find something bad. It's not really the Free Software developers that are whining. Instead it is a third party that wants you to pay them money to help you sort out a licensing issue on the off chance that the Free Software developers *do* decide to complain. You might not think that this is a service, but your legal counsel probably has a different opinion.
It's stupid simple. The point of the GPL is to make source code freely available. You can only get in trouble with the GPL if you don't want that, in which case of course the GPL is not for you. All the GPL does is list ways of you being an asshole and telling you not to do that, given that you accepted the premise that the GPL is about making source code available.
As a computing professional, I find all of this whining about Free Software license complexity rather embarrassing frankly.
Who's whining? Please, don't be unnecessarily rude.
I understand licenses such as the GPL very well. I'm not whining, and I don't find the license complex in the least. I'm simply pointing out that for commercial software developers, GPL'd code is often not an option.
I also write software for my wife's small business with no plans to distribute, but I avoid GPL code in those projects, too, in case I ever do decide to commercialize what I've created. I don't want to get trapped into too much reliance on something with too high a cost, then be forced to refactor at great expense in terms of time later down the road.
I have no problem with other people using GPL code if they want to.
Electronic Arts and Oracle can manage navigating this "quagmire". Why can't you?
Why the hostile and rude attitude?
One really wonders what an SBA audit of you whiners would turn up.
Wow...fuck you, too.
I don't pirate anything. Anything. Not software. Not music. Not movies. Your thinly veiled accusation that I'm a thief is assholery in the top degree.
As a computing professional, you should know that EA and Oracle are large corporations, with large, well-staffed legal departments. One of the jobs of said legal departments is navigating quagmires.
But sometimes licenses of products change. I recently wanted to update the gSOAP toolkit we're using to the latest point-release, but it turned out that stuff which used not to be covered by the GPL (viz. the code generated by the soapcpp2 compiler) was now considered to be GPL. Even though the (generated) code hardly changed (apart from the "generated with soapcpp2 version x.y.z" comment at the top), we had to revert the toolchain.
I'm not saying commercial software vendors don't try to change their contracts with you after you've initially agreed to them - I'm just saying you do have to scrutinize the licenses everytime you update your stuff.
You say "either what you're doing is a derivative work or not" as if that's an easy thing to determine. It isn't necessarily.
As a computing "professional" (by which I assume you mean you charge your neighbours for emptying all the donkey-porn from their cache) you are doubtless unaware that multi-million earning international corporations EA and Oracle have large staffs of lawyers on their teams, something which individual developers tend to lack. The absence of a team of lawyers trained in licensing law is detrimental to a full, legal understanding of every ramification of the various manifestations of the GPL.
You can use and distribute copyleft software like anyone else.
The expensive part is that you can't (easily/effective) sell it, though to be fair you likely didn't pay for it either.
For users copyleft software can be some of theleast expensive.
I don't have to upgrade, I don't have to pay for it, it doesn't have time bombs in it.
If tehre are problems I can get them fixed without relying on the origional vendor to do it, and my data isn't locked up in proprietary formats.
For some of us, copyleft code is, by far, the most expensive code there is. In fact, it's pretty much poison.
What?!?
Explain, please, in 300 words or less, how using GPL software costs you money.
And no, opportunity cost does not count as costing you money. It wasn't your code to begin with, so you haven't lost money because you can't treat it as if it were. (That would be what a lot of software capitalists call 'Piracy'.)
And no, you don't lose money because someone else improved on your code. Other people got to benefit from your labour, but you get to benefit from theirs as well. It's quid pro quo all the way down.
And no, losing your customers to Johnny-come-lately competitors is not theft. It's perfectly fair. It's called competition. You don't have some innate God-given right to customers. You have to earn them every day. And if your customers are willing to drop you at the first opportunity, you've got more problems with your business than the GPL.
And no, having to maintain and provide source code to your customers is neither expensive nor 'poisonous'. If you're not maintaining your source code well, then that's the fish you have to fry - it's a problem with your processes, not with the GPL.
So remind me once again: How is the GPL poisonous, except insofar as it makes life difficult for rent-seeking leeches? How is sharing willingly and openly costing you money?
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
You don't have to use it. Hell, how about you write your own fucking code?
Copyleft code is cheap, if BSD give credit, if GPL make source available for everything. Done and done. None of these cost much money at all.
Experiment: Get two people to read the GPL...
Ask the two people a series of questions relating to what point do they need to share their code even though it is totally unrelated to the GPL work.
When I invoke it from a shell?
When I invoke it from a shared library?
When I invoke it from a library linked to the application?
When I invoke it from a separate shim process using shared memory or domain sockets?
When I interact with something else that invokes it?
Why?
The GPL is unique in that it is a vampire license...Commercial licenses don't work that way...They are coherent and easy to understand.
LGPL is coherent and easy to understand. GPL is hostile to commercial developers as well as other developers who choose to control the terms of their work. I've seen entire open source projects rewritten to work around GPL. It is really a waste of time in my opinion... Commercial developers are the ones with the resources to really contribute to a shared system and make it better... GPL..in many cases... not so much...
Android development is not what you'd call license-centric. Stuff gets plugged together and shipped. I'd bet 99% of devs haven't so much as read a license that came with a library they had to go hunting for to get their buttons and spinners to work.
It's about time the FOSS clowns stopped whining about licensing so hard. Their hypocrisy is showing.
Run your search, count how many places you find your code, and brag about it. Otherwise, stop being a goit.
You might have found the successor to Fair and Balanced!
It would be more clear if it said 7.6% of the apps they looked at were in violation, but it's "more interesting" to state totally wild obfuscations because the most inaccurate writing seems to be winning lately. And those other stories a day or three ago were wondering what happened to our state of science education.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Sure it is. If there's any ambiguity, it's likely because you're trying to game the system.
There are very few cases where there is any real doubt whether the spirit of the GPL applies.
When I looked at using a CMS for a personal website, I discounted any which used GPL3, because I couldn't be sure that if I changed a template I would need to make it available, not to mention doing a small code change. It's not that I mind sharing, it's just that it's a hassle and it just worries me that if I use a GPL3 CMS I'm opening up a pandora's box. I don't know if that's really the case, but because these licenses are complex to decipher and GPL has a reputation, it's not something I want to risk. So even though it's not for profit, and I don't have a real problem sharing the changes I did, I'd rather stay away and not be liable for anything.
The problem with many of the open source licenses is that they are complex. A commercial license to source code or libraries typically gives you simple terms: certain people can use the code for certain purposes for a certain number of projects for a certain amount of money. Some open source licenses, GPL in particular, contain tons of legalese and conditions which IMO makes such licenses best avoided by most developers, regardless of whether they're used for commercial purposes or not.
Using open source requires making some decisions and in certain sacrificing something. If you are hoping to get a freebie, then you will want to be using a BSD license, but if you decide to use code with GPL then you have to recognise the intent is about "giving back to your peers" - it is not really "something for nothing" as many people think it is. Healthy open source is about people participating in the process, rather than simply trying to get as much free stuff as possible and complaining that the upstream developers aren't doing enough.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
How is copyleft software costing you anything or is a pain?
Is someone forcing you to use it?
How about this, if you don't want to share alike then STFU and write your own code. Seems pretty simple really.
oh for fuck's SAKE.
LEARN TO SPEAK YOUR OWN FUCKING LANGUAGE BEFORE YOU TRY AND COME OVER ALL CLEVER.
i have no issue with people talking like idiots if that's how they grew up speaking. that's fine. i've no issue with people talking like idiots even if it's *not* how they grew up speaking.
what i take issue with is pretentious fuckarses like you misusing "whom" so painfully it makes my fucking throat bleed. seriously, just take a break from ripping your cock to shreds while masturbating endlessly to screenshots of gnome 3 to explain why you used "whom" there? now, listen carefully. what case is that in? is it in dative? no, it's not. is it in accusative? no, it's not. so, should we be using "whom"? no, we should not. why are we using "whom"? oh, because we're a pretentious fucking RETARD who can't even speak his own fucking language.
"whom" is dying out of english. if you don't know how to use it FUCKING LET IT DIE. don't rape its corpse on the way.
that is because copyleft code is for copyleft development and for end users, it is not there for you to steal.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I don't see anywhere where the person you are bitching at says they use GPL code. He says it is poison, so I assume that means he doesn't use it. As far as your other asinine assertions, yes, I am sure Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Oracle, IBM, SAP, BEA, etc would all be the corporations they are today if they gave away their source code. Clearly, giving your source code away costs you nothing.
Where did he say he uses it? All he did was give a reason he doesn't use it.
I have yet to meet a single individual that truly doesn't pirate ANYTHING. You really have never sang happy birthday to someone in a public place? You never drew a copy of a popular cartoon character for a child just because they wanted you to? Copyright violations are EVERYWHERE. It is just that they tend not to get prosecuted if there isn't any money in it.
Hmm, something's fishy here... oh, wait. I see. It's right there in TFA:
OpenLogic sells a product called the OLEX App Store Edition which provides tooling that can be used by developers to do a self-service scan on their apps prior to submitting to the app store and by app stores to track open source compliance.
How convenient! A one-company study -- using undisclosed methodology -- draws broad and irrational conclusions that suggest that people really need to buy its products and services. Amazing!
As an iOS developer, I use a lot of open source frameworks. But most of them are BSD licences - I'm really curious what they found that they considered to be GPL or Apache or LGPL, as I'm not aware of any really popular frameworks using those licenses.
Another thing to consider is that the users of the frameworks may not be in violation of the INTENT of the license. I'm imagine there are a number of people that just publish code and slap a GPL on it because it's easy to find that license, not thinking about what that means for the consumers of the code. They may not care at all an application itself contains no links to the source.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
2. They offer to sell developers scanning software so devs can make sure their apps are in compliance.
3. PROFIT!?!
Color me skeptical.
Oh really? Can you please tell us what would be the cost of building a product on a proprietary closed-source software program which doesn't grant anyone the right to extend it, let alone commercialize any derivative work?
It appears that you are one of those ignorant FLOSS detractors who tries to bitch that hijacking other people's code is "most expensive" while the alternative is... you investing your own time to fill all the countless man-hours that it took other people to build the software you are trying to sell off as if it was your own? Because you sure can't just pick up, for example, Microsoft Office, tweak it's UI and sell it off as Teckla's Office suite.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Maybe FSF/GNU...Linux...Apache should send DMCA-like take-down notices to the Android Market Place (AMP).
A little code filtering for malicious-fraud/theft of L/FOSS would be very fun/funny to see, after all the MS, SCO... shit over the past couple decades.
Could AMP be forced to put up and sustain an androidforge.net site or L/FOSS used for AMP-apps?
Should AMP force all AMP-apps on the AMP-site to label/identify with an OSS-tag/link for code download?
I say someone should go fyckwidem soon.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
One of the jobs of said legal departments is navigating quagmires.
Another job is to avoid creating one. The license bureaucrats will drown you all.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Start filing the lawsuits. The whole purpose of copyleft is to use copyright law against itself. If we start actually enforcing the licenses, we'll be doing exactly what we're supposed to, and probably making a tidy profit to boot. It might not even require personal effort on our part - there's gotta be a lawyer somewhere reading this article, with dollar signs dancing through his head. If a medium-sized business like OpenLogic was able to find all these violations, a couple interns at a law firm could probably find just as many, and I doubt many open-source hackers would refuse to sue someone who is violating their license.
I don't see anywhere where the person you are bitching at says they use GPL code.
Fine. 'Copyleft'. Which, not coincidentally, is 99% GPL.
He says it is poison, so I assume that means he doesn't use it.
So how, then, is it expensive to him? How is it poisonous if he didn't take it?
See, the problem I have here is not that people don't like the license. It's that they seem to imply that it's costly. But we all know this is code for 'it's poisonous to me when you use the GPL because it takes away another opportunity for rent-seeking behaviour on my part.'
The vast majority of businesses profit from GPL (and yes, all the other copyleft) software, because software is a cost centre. For the few who treat software as a product, then yeah, commoditisation is a bitch. But you know what? I'll say the same thing to them as I say to telcos and the entertainment industry: Your business environment is changing. Adapt or die.
As far as your other asinine assertions, yes, I am sure Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Oracle, IBM, SAP, BEA, etc would all be the corporations they are today if they gave away their source code. Clearly, giving your source code away costs you nothing.
Dude, IBM, Apple and, to a much lesser degree, Microsoft do give away significant chunks of their source code. So I guess they would be the corporations they are today... because they, uh, are.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Stuff like the apache harmony libraries - you know, that stuff google and oracle are fighting over? The one that doesn't require making the source available?
"we"? you're part of stallman's magic ninja gpl-enforcing crack squad? rejoin reality you pathetic nerd -- you're fat and everyone thinks you're a loser.
Yep, you are a bone-head. First don't break any copyright/law. Second don't whine when you want to steal and sell the best OSS code you can find, because you want easy-money [AKA: Corporate Welfare]. Third if you can't compete fairly then find another business, industry, market... you weaseling corporate-welfare jerk.
GPL allows you to have configuration-control of your project/product and forces you to compete in a highly competitive and innovative capitalist market place.
INNOVATION with CAPITALISM work much better with L/FOSS. The last two decades of L/FOSS growth is an indicator of market places to come to US, EU... if we want to be globally competitive in the future.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
You can use and distribute copyleft software like anyone else.
The expensive part is that you can't (easily/effective) sell it, though to be fair you likely didn't pay for it either.
For users copyleft software can be some of theleast expensive. I don't have to upgrade, I don't have to pay for it, it doesn't have time bombs in it. If tehre are problems I can get them fixed without relying on the origional vendor to do it, and my data isn't locked up in proprietary formats.
Not all open-source licenses require you to distribute the source. MIT, BSD, Apache Harmony (which is what portions of the Android libraries are based on) don't require distribution of the source. So sure, you can effectively sell products derived from it. Microsoft has been doing so for decades (look at the license for their ftp program as an example).
Read http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2028362&cid=35424574 and GTFU corporate-welfare-brat.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
I lead a team of mobile devs for a largish organization.
Every time a press release like this surfaces (especially if picked up by Gartner) my email inbox swells by a large positive exponent.
My answer is always the same: they have something to sell - the press release is almost completely fact free. If you really care, call them up and get some specifics. I'll deal w/it then.
Some days I think the best way to make a buck in mobile is to issue a press release claiming a big exploit or some other hot button guaranteed to spook the suits.
Are you the Sheriff of Rottingham? This isn't Robin Hood: Men in Tights, but that was a flawless impression.
But. But... Apple's App Store is the bad anti-open place. I mean I heard about VLC and Go. It's Apple that's evil. Not Google.
You might not like whining, but I can guarantee you that you'll like litigation a lot less.
"C'mon folks" sounds like what a 7 year old kid says when he can't get his way. How about a middle of the road approach and some goddamned professionalism?
Especially because you will lose, and the penalties for copyright violation are ridiculous (at least in the U.S.).
I'll believe that when I see it.
If it were only about source code then there wouldn't be any trouble having GPL code in the Apple App Store with the source code on a server. But of course GPL demands more than that.
I'm not saying that's bad mind you. I only get annoyed when GPL zealots call any other way of doing things evil. But more power to them if they actually write GPL code. I'm really skeptical the average GPL zealot actually contributes much to the community. They more just enjoy getting stuff for free.
However to portray the GPL as only about source code is pretty disingenuous.
GPL violations are why I didnt buy Android and why I bought a Nokia N900 instead.
HTC routinely violates the GPL by not releasing kernel source for their new phones until months after the hardware is released (and until big community pressure). If it was once or twice, I could understand. But the fact that it happens again and again shows that HTC has contempt for the GPL and doesn't care.
Motorola is just as bad as HTC (I owned a Motorola pre-android linux phone and their compliance on those was no better)
I went with the Nokia N900 since Nokia is in 100% compliance with the GPL and not only that, the N900 has NO software locks preventing you from installing new software, alternative OSs etc.
You are conflating commercial and proprietary. The GPL does not prevent commercial activity. The GPL prevents software distributors from imposing certain restrictions over downstream recipients; i.e. distributors are not allowed to distribute GPL software as proprietary software. These restrictions do not imply that the GPL prevents commercial activity, they only imply GPL software cannot be distributed as proprietary software.
What single requirement of the GPL do you consider to be onerous and unrelated to source code?
What if I write some proprietary software from scratch and ship it along with some startup scripts and some GPLed utility binaries that are invoked by the scripts? Fuck if I know, but I don't think that's gaming the system.
As a commercial software developer myself, I'm glad at least one other person on Slashdot understands this!
The reason so few people "understand" it is because it's complete and utter bullshit.
For some of us, copyleft code is, by far, the most expensive code there is. In fact, it's pretty much poison.
No, it's simple. Don't use it. That costs you absoloutely nothing.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
There's a huge difference though. With a proprietary library I pay for a license to use it under certain terms, which was the whole point of buying the license in the first place. With most open source libraries, they are freely offered to me, but with the complicated terms.
Thus if I don't like the open source terms, or if I'm not sure they will fit into my proprietary program, I should buy some code that does (maybe from the OSS author... he or she can relicense), or write my own code.
So if you want to complain about how "expensive" open source libraries are, that simply comes across as whining. They gave me this free code but I can't do what I want with it. Seems like most people who whine about how hard it is to use OSS code in a proprietary project need to just let it go and buy code under a license that fits their needs. If they are going to make money, then why not expect to pay library developers as well.
Comments like this one cause me to desire to release all my code only under the GPL if I was writing a library, just so I can get paid for it when my code is used in a proprietary situation.
Now, if you are an OSS developer using OSS tools and libraries, juggling licenses can get very tricky indeed.
copy-left is a fucking pain in the ass unless you are also copy-left
No it isn't. It's simple. Don't use it. That's no more of a pain in the ass than commercial software which is too expensive.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Minor nit: BSD isn't copyleft. The "viral" quality is the defining feature of copyleft.
I think it is even more the point that you "pay" for the work that was put into whatever you now use by means of your own work.
Who wants to bet that none of those six hundred and something apps was a decent PDF reader for Android?
It does not prevent commercial activity, but it does constrain commercial activity and impose legal requirements on adopters.
The average Joe without a massive legal department behind him to keep him honest does face an uphill battle if they chose to use or redistribute FOSS components.
That being said, because I work for one of the worlds largest corporations with a huge legal staff AND quite possibly the single largest corporate contributor to open source, all of my work is based on open frameworks and FOSS. As a result I get to re-use most of the time instead of re-inventing the wheel at every turn. This is the true benefit of open source. The cost however is not trivial, but it is cheaper than reinventing the wheel once you scale it up.
In short, doing it right ain't easy, but it does pay off in the long run.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Fuck if I know, but I don't think that's gaming the system.
That's because you are too fucking stupid to read the fucking license.
CmdrTaco's title is unabashedly trolling. He never struck me as an iOS fanboi before. That's right. I said it.
Ooh, flamebait AND troll. I really don't understand this place anymore.
RMS envisioned a world in which all software was Free (Libre), and then he thought about how this could be brought about. What he came up with was two-pronged. 1) copyleft 2) write lots of really excellent software, so excellent that people will want to use it even though they know they will get sucked into the copyleft.
3) Spend the next decade arguing and complaining about how Linux only obeyed the license and didn't also name itself "GNU/Linux" as his licence specifically did not require...
>fortranrage.txt
Dude, you are an idiot. Do you have any idea how much software IBM sells? Let's see we have OS products (AIX, z/OS, z/VM, z/VSE, z/TPF, i5/OS). We have information management products (DB2, InfoSphere). We have Tivoli products. We have Lotus products. We have WebSphere products. We have Rational products. Then we have the stuff they don't sell outright, like firmware. How much of that is open source? Zero. Sure, they contribute a lot of stuff to Linux because it helps them sell million dollar mainframes they might not otherwise sell, and they have the open source Eclipse. I'm guessing that well under 1% of the code IBM owns is open source - hardly a 'significant chunk'.
Oh, maybe it's Apple you were really talking about. Yeah, I did see that they have open sourced OS X, iTunes, the code that runs on iPads, iPhones, and iPods, iWork, Final Cut, etc. Oh wait, that didn't happen either.
Maybe who you are really thinking of is Sun, which made the brilliant decision to open source much of their stuff, which is why they are now such an impressive business. Oh wait, they don't exist anymore.
Most of you use p2p to download and serve movies and music, no? You don't care about copyright then; why should you care about it now?
-- Cheers!
What are you going to do about it? Call the police?
The purpose of the GPL is to promote freedom. If you don't support freedom, why are you writing GPL'd code? (Someone who wants to use GPL'd code and not grant others the same rights that they enjoyed is a parasite and no one cares what they think -- I'm sure that doesn't describe you.)
"IP", assuming you mean "intellectual property", is a null term. Copyright, not some vague notion of "intellectual property" that lumps copyright, patent, and trademark together, is what is relevant. The GPL uses copyright in a judo-like fashion to protect, rather than take away, people's freedom to use and share software. If you don't want to use copyright to that end, don't use the GPL. Of course, if you don't want to promote and protect people's freedom to use and share software, I think that's pretty sad, but, so it goes.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I want to promote people's ability to use the code that I publish *any way they like*, so I use a BSD-like licence: GPL would severely limit what some users could do with it.
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
Why is it people constantly get this half right. He envisioned free software AND developers would be compensated for their labor and associated services. People absolutely love to "forget" developers must eat too.
The problem is, the greater public are only fulfilling half their obligation. They want free software and frequently show contempt for developers who hope to make a living from associated labor and services.
Android has proved to especially suffer as pirates refuse to pay third world software rates which force massive adware for android. Now pirates are working hard to remove adware for otherwise free software. On android pirates literally are taking money out of developer pockets.
Free software will fail unless people stop parroting half the truth and start honoring the other half of their obligations.
If someone releases a piece of software under some license then everyone who wishes to use that software must respect the copyright author's wishes and comply with the conditions specified in the license. That applies to any software distributed under a license, including proprietary licenses.
If someone distributes their code under a license that grants the user the right to access the code provided that they follow a set of conditions specified in the license then everyone who wishes to use that code is forced to respect the author's wishes and comply with the license. That applies to any code distributed under a license, including proprietary licenses, even those that basically state "you can look but you can't touch".
If a user has access to the source code of a particular software package then that user is forced to follow the conditions set forth by the authors, which are encoded in the license. That user has absolutely no rights to hijack other people's code just because he has access to it. If it's a proprietary license that states "you can look but you can't touch" then that user cannot hijack that code, include it in his projects and license it off as their own, completely ignoring the author's wishes. If it's a FLOSS license that states "you can look, you can touch and you can distribute, provided that you also let others access the code in the very same terms you benefited" then, just like in the proprietary license scenario, that user cannot hijack that code, include it in his projects and license it off as their own, completely ignoring the author's wishes.
That means, in short, that just because some work is distributed under a FLOSS license it doesn't grant anyone the right to rip off the software's authors and simply hijack their code. If a user wants to access any given work of art and try to use it commercially then he is forced to respect the author's conditions. This holds invariably to any license, whether it's a proprietary license or a FLOSS license. You can't just rip off other people and hijack their code to suit your fancy. It's not your code and it never was. Therefore you either follow the author's wishes or you go off writing your own code. Is it so hard to understand?
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Do you feel better now?
your inevitable life joke is hilarious. har.
Hey, I know a joke! A squirrel walks up to a tree and says, "I forgot to store acorns for the winter and now I am dead."
Dropbox drops it like it's hot.
So respect copyright law when its Free Software, but not when its commercial entertainment content? Fuck that..
Why? Was he wrong? From what I read it seems like he has multiple points and too many F/OSS cultists would have him boiled in piss for being honest. I'm actually surprised it was modded up as much as it was.
Using "they" and "them" as gender-neutral singular pronouns isn't widely accepted by prescriptivist language authorities.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Oooh, with that insightful and informative post, you've proven that you are a literary genius. Please let me suck your cock.
I don't think I said onerous. As I said I think there's room for all the licenses. However the part that keeps GPL code out of DRMed app stores goes beyond source code.
I think it's hilarious how 80% of the comments here are simply "No one is forcing you to use it!" as if we haven't considered this before. As if we aren't allowed to criticize the GPL because we don't have to use the GPL.
We don't use it. I would never touch GPL'd source code.
I am however a fan of BSD. I want people to truly be able to do anything with my code as they see fit. If they want to use my code in their commercial products, more power to them. They can then decide how they want to handle people down the line. I don't personally feel like I should dictate what the person after me does with my work.
Nice advertisement inkscapee. Your next contribution will be a website called Super Malware Cleaner filled with figures and percentages (with no relation to reality or any statistical method).
It sounds to me as though the the GP finds it difficult to find loopholes in the GPL. That is what takes time.
The only legitimate problems I have come across are grey areas around proprietary plugins and mixing GPL code with proprietary libraries or GPL with open source libraries with GPL incompatible restrictions (e.g. an advertising clause). There is plenty of documentation provided by the FSF (and FAQ and a list of compatible licences) and I doubt there are many legitimate questions to which you cannot get an answer in five minutes.
ON the other hand proprietary licences are not necessarily that straightforward either. What about the cost of tracking licences: QT is per developer, others require a royalty per unit, others per product, so depend on licences for other products in ambiguous ways (e.g. MS .Net Framework license).
I'm all for OS bashing of one kind or another, but can we do it with some semblance of rationality, rather than only reporting half a story?
To much anime is bad for the brain...desu.
Sorry. Couldn't help it.
Write your own software then asshole.
Fortunately Microsoft saves us from this with Windows Phone by the Application Provider Agreement you have to comply to for access to developer web site and marketplace.
http://create.msdn.com/en-us/home/legal/Windows_Phone_Marketplace_Application_Provider_Agreement
Maybe because they have huge separate legal departments that deal with these issues ?
I suspect anything that is GPL, LGPL is in violation because of what certain developers have been saying about the compatability of how the application store works.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
In the country where i live. None of the things you mention are copyright violations.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
Well, you are by far overexaggerating!
Simple calculation:
adding a make source distribution target to my build system: 1h
adding a push source distribution on ftp server target to the build script: 1h
updating the documentation with references to the download option: 1h
getting a server up and running, connected to the internet, DNS and name servers set up etc etc.: 10h
alternative, rent some webspace with a suite able traffic plan: $10/month?
Anyway, add it up yourself including your own wages.
It certainly costs something to set up the infrastructure for redistributing code. Something a 1 person shop might "postpone" until someone "asks" ;D
Regards,
angel'o'sphere
P.S. you perhaps should read the GP instead of freaking out like you did ... even the other answers to the GP are very rude and misplaced
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
No it is not legally fuzzy. You only don't know what derived work means. That is not defined in the license but in the law!
"Derived Work" is a law terminus just like "license" is. You can google for it or even better google for the copy right law paragraphs, it is that simple!
And yes, for your information, the "GUI wrapper that calls your GPLed tool" clearly is derived work, no glimpse of an uncertainty in that.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Add rule to makefile to compress entire source directory, and add the compressed file to the distribution file (archive, installer, whatever you are using): 10 minutes.
Add license files, and stick a note in readme file about said licenses: 5 minutes.
There is no requirement to offer a download. Including the source is among the options (at least for the GPL, which I'm most familiar with).
I agree that angel'o'sphere overstated the complexity in some respects. However, you're also oversimplifying it. First of all, shouldn't every file in the source include the GPL license or a reference to it? That's a bit of work. Besides that, for many projects there's need to detail dependencies, get source codes from various directories into that archive, and so on.
IMO the most work is in making your source presentable. I guess that's why some open source comes uncommented, as it's easier to strip the comments out than to make sure they're relevant and readable.
There are also potential complications. For example if you become aware of stepping over a patent after you've first distributed your code, it looks like you could be in trouble.
Electronic Arts and Oracle can manage navigating this "quagmire". Why can't you?
Electronic arts and Oracle have lots of expensive lawyers on retainer to figure this stuff out, while i'm only a single guy trying to sell some software for a phone?
How many of you FOSS advocates have an illegal copy of Windows running in a VM or dual-boot config. And yet bitch about it when it happens to you...
Heh.
Which condition of the GPL are you referring to?
No, it doesn't go outside source code. Tying a runnable library to a signed application requires solely that you allow the user to sign their own binaries. Otherwise you have the right to speak but have no mouth, and what point is the right to speak useful in that case?
So when I got Win XP source code I was allowed to do anything with it, including building my own Windows XP and selling it?
No, I don't think so.
If you don't want others to use your code, why is it released under an open source license?
So everyone can has the same rights as you to improve and share the code.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
First, a lot of the GPL is open to interpretation. Same goes for pretty much any other license. For example, does a GUI wrapper that calls your GPLed tool fall under the category of a derivative work?
Why do you worry about such minutiae? Write the code to interface with the wrapper and be done with it. What do you care if someone else interfaces with the wrapper in the same manner as you?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Most small companies have lawyers on contract, i.e. they pay them per service. You have to be pretty big to afford having lawyers on salary that are just sitting around waiting for you to send them licenses to read through.
The GPL has changed how many times in how many years? Once it's read, it's read. You take, you share. It's basic meaning hasn't changed much at all. Only those looking to find loopholes to violate it have to worry about reading over and over again.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I'm not saying that's bad mind you. I only get annoyed when GPL zealots call any other way of doing things evil. But more power to them if they actually write GPL code. I'm really skeptical the average GPL zealot actually contributes much to the community. They more just enjoy getting stuff for free.
What is wrong with getting stuff for free, especially if you received the stuff for free as well?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I don't think I said onerous. As I said I think there's room for all the licenses. However the part that keeps GPL code out of DRMed app stores goes beyond source code.
What good does it do an end user to have code he can not use?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
He's just a troll though. You need to find an example of someone without an axe to grind against Apple. Don't forget that VLC themselves were fine with the app.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Doesn't seem like a troll to me.
But what he said is true. The distributor's DRM scheme violates the licensing. If that's the case, then you can't just include LGPL libraries and such without seeking out the copyright holder(s) to see if they will make a exemption for you.
Except the VLC developer mailing list shows otherwise, where did you get that information from?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
u mad, bro?