No GPL Apps for Apple's App Store
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No GPL Apps for Apple's App Store
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Re: No GPL Apps for Apple's App Store
#2Another reason to go BSD over GPL unless you really do care about the GNU project more than shipping code & solutions.
Re: No GPL Apps for Apple's App Store
#3Another reason to go BSD over GPL unless you really do care about the GNU project more than shipping code & solutions.
I drew exactly the opposite conclusion. Go with BSD if you want Apple to steal your code and contribute back nothing to the community (how much have they given back to Free/NetBSD?).
Re: No GPL Apps for Apple's App Store
#4Another reason to go BSD over GPL unless you really do care about the GNU project more than shipping code & solutions.
I drew exactly the opposite conclusion. Go with BSD if you want Apple to steal your code and contribute back nothing to the community (how much have they given back to Free/NetBSD?).
Darwin?
How is it stealing if it's open source, and the end result is the best desktop OS ever created? Sheesh
And Apple's work on open source Clang/LLVM and WebKit has been quite significant has it not?
Re: No GPL Apps for Apple's App Store
#5Another reason to go BSD over GPL unless you really do care about the GNU project more than shipping code & solutions.
I drew exactly the opposite conclusion. Go with BSD if you want Apple to steal your code and contribute back nothing to the community (how much have they given back to Free/NetBSD?).
This keeps being brought up, the whole apple not contributing back to FreeBSD, but I would urge you to please look through FreeBSD's CVS history to find all of the places that Apple HAS indeed contributed back (I've made several comments with links to such sources on HN before).
Apple also has an entire website dedicated to the various pieces of source code for their OS, and other tools, and are actively developing clang/llvm (they hired the creator) which is under a BSD license ... WebKit is also a thriving open source implementation of a rendering engine for a browser and is actively used by various different projects.
Your comment brings absolutely nothing to this discussion other than unsubstantiated claims and misinformation.
Re: No GPL Apps for Apple's App Store
#6Can't it be re-released under dual licenses? There seems to be plenty of other software out there that has done this.
Re: No GPL Apps for Apple's App Store
#7Another reason to go BSD over GPL unless you really do care about the GNU project more than shipping code & solutions.
I drew exactly the opposite conclusion. Go with BSD if you want Apple to steal your code and contribute back nothing to the community (how much have they given back to Free/NetBSD?).
llvm, clang, webkit...
Directly benefiting FreeBSD: http://wiki.freebsd.org/BuildingFreeBSDWithClang
They've contributed infinitely more than "nothing" back. Literally...
Re: No GPL Apps for Apple's App Store
#8Can't it be re-released under dual licenses? There seems to be plenty of other software out there that has done this.
It depends on which license the code is in already and what each contributor allows.
If you own the copyright, completely, you can license under virtually any license, ever, at any time. Period.
But if you have an open-source project with tons of contributors, well, they licensed their work under the terms of a specific license. And in the case of the GPL, it explicitly means that their contributions CANNOT be redistributed under ANY terms that conflict with the “freedoms” guaranteed to end users, etc., by the GPL. However, you can at any time release a BSD-licensed work under the GPL. This is part of why the GPL is sometimes called “viral” — once it touches you, it’s hard/impossible to escape, see?
So what would have to happen would be for everyone who ever contributed to VLC to say, “Okay, I’m chill with BSD,” and the code contributed by anyone who refused to do so would need re-written e.g. in a cleanroom to avoid copyright infringement. :-/
Re: No GPL Apps for Apple's App Store
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
I drew exactly the opposite conclusion. Go with BSD if you want Apple to steal your code and contribute back nothing to the community (how much have they given back to Free/NetBSD?).
Darwin? How is it stealing if it's open source, and the end result is the best desktop OS ever created? Sheesh And Apple's work on open source Clang/LLVM and WebKit has been quite significant has it not?
it has. But I think its important to point out that freebsd and the bsd-stack is not in any way in competition with osx. Apple develops products, and earns money by creating products that average joe can operate with ease. This means that Apple is able to commoditize off open source, by taking and contributing back to their projects of interest. Free Software Foundation have their understanding of what freedom is. Unfortunately the fight for freedom has resulted in a rather complicated GPL v3 opposed to BSD-licenses which demand that your respect copyright and by that restricts you less than the GPLish licenses. It's ironic, but BSD offers more freedom than GPL. Also, it's a shame that VLC - being the most kick-ass videoplayer today - is hindered by legal issues.
As a funny sidenote, one could say that if you choose GPL you need to consult your legal-department. But if you choose BSD you don't even need a legal-department.
Re: No GPL Apps for Apple's App Store
#10Can't it be re-released under dual licenses? There seems to be plenty of other software out there that has done this.
I believe that in order to do that, they would need to aggregate the copyright or get permission to change the license from each contributor. From what I understand, most projects that have dual-licensed have required contributor assignment of copyright from early on.
Edit: Here's a good overview on it http://opensource.com/law/10/9/copyright-aggregation