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Open Source Licensing and the App Store Model
snydeq writes "Savio Rodrigues sheds light on the limitations open source software faces in app stores, a problem that will only increase as the app store model proliferates. 'In effect, in the context of a GPLv2 license, an Apple App Store item that abides by Apple's terms of service is deemed to be restricting usage and imposing further limitation on usage rights than were envisioned by the original licensor of the open source code,' Rodrigues writes. 'Far from being an abstract example, this situation is precisely why the popular VLC media player was removed from the App Store.' Microsoft, for its part, disallows the use of GPLv2 altogether. 'With the vast amount of GPLv2 code available for use, the incompatibility between the App Store's (and Windows Marketplace's) terms of service on one hand and GPLv2 on the other is a problem in need of a fix.'"
The issue is not GPLv2 because its wording is silent on the issues that people are claiming incompatibility. GPLv3 is incompatible because it has explicit language which is unfriendly towards commercial use so it can prevent third parties from publishing in the Appstore. Neither GPLv2 or GPLv3 trump the copyright of the author or authors. When all authors agree to distribute on the app store, then there is no problem. The problem arrises when one of the contributors disagrees and exerts their copyright to block submission to the app store. It is a copyright issue only. The GPLV2 itself is not the stumbling block. Please stop spreading FUD whether it be in support of the FSF's own FUD or against the GPL. It is just a license and it does not trump copyright nor is it a living document which is why it is versioned.
Let me put this in as simply as possible. No license be it GPLv2, GPLv3 can prevent an application from being published on the appstore by the author or authors. The incompatibility in GPLV3 only applies to third parties publishing an application because the GPL has no power to remove the original copyrights of the author(s).
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
1. Free Software Foundation
2. Brett Smith is not a lawyer.
3. The reason VLC isn't on the app store is because Rémi Denis-Courmont filed a copyright infringement notice.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
No, they don't have to offer it "via exactly the same means as the binaries".
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
Nothing in there says that the source must be provided in the same form as the binary. You could have binaries released via the App store, but mail out source code on CD, for instance.