Last Chance to Get VLC for iPhone/iPad? Likely to be Pulled from App Store?

[BC2009]

Regarding the developer's analysis -- he had two sections that were difficult for him to interpret

An iOS device can apparently only hold synced content from at most 5 different iTunes accounts. For example, if I can authorize my iTunes to playback content from multiple iTunes accounts, but only content from 5 distinct accounts can be synced to a single iOS device.

The "from up to" language is rather confusing here and it seems more a typo than anything else. Anyway, this is more a limitation on the number of accounts that a single iOS device can handle simultaneously -- most of use only one. I don't see it limiting distribution of VLC since VLC can be freely downloaded from the AppStore to any and ALL of those accounts. As long as you can sync content from ONE iTunes account you can get VLC from the AppStore for FREE.

Secondly..... "(iv) You shall be able to store App Store Products on five iTunes-authorized devices at any time".

This deals with the number of iTunes you can authorize to use your iTunes account. This IS restrictive with respect to your iTunes account. Your iTunes account cannot be authorized for every user on the planet. However, there is NO limit to the number of iTunes accounts you can have (just needs a distinct email address). Further, ANY iTunes account can download VLC freely from the AppStore -- so it would seem any iTunes installation could download the app even it does not actually run on that machine. Essentially iTunes becomes a distribution point for the app to an iOS device.

Anyway, I'm not a lawyer, but that's how I see those points.

 

[JordanNZ]

And where did you get the FSF is mistaken ? Even the post you refer to claims to have no factual basis, only an opinion. Yet you're sitting here stating as fact that the FSF is mistaken.

Again, let the involved parties sort it out and come to factual conclusions themselves before we start throwing around facts.

Oh come on.

The confusion stems from them referencing the OLD app store terms as if they still apply. The fact is that the terms HAVE changed, that is a FACT. In terms of interpreting those new terms... Now this is where it gets interesting!

 

[KnightWRX]

Oh come on.

The confusion stems from them referencing the OLD app store terms as if they still apply. How is that being fair to anyone?

You're saying as a fact that the new policies would not cause confusion, so you're stating a fact that the new policies make it clear cut. Now you're also arguing there is no issue, so you're saying, as a fact, that the new policies are GPL compatible.

Facts no one in the VLC project have stated themselves, facts the FSF disputes (are you even sure that the OLD policies that they refer to have even changed ? Last I recall, the latest change was simply a loosening of the approval process, not some kind of shift in distribution and signing models).

Anyway, I'm not a lawyer, but that's how I see those points.

The FSF has a lawyer on board though, so let's not be so quick to dismiss their arguments : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Moglen

 

[wovel]

You're saying as a fact that the new policies would not cause confusion, so you're stating a fact that the new policies make it clear cut. Now you're also arguing there is no issue, so you're saying, as a fact, that the new policies are GPL compatible.

Facts no one in the VLC project have stated themselves, facts the FSF disputes (are you even sure that the OLD policies that they refer to have even changed ? Last I recall, the latest change was simply a loosening of the approval process, not some kind of shift in distribution and signing models).



The FSF has a lawyer on board though, so let's not be so quick to dismiss their arguments : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Moglen

I would consider JB part of the VLC project, you linked his post (or at least quoted a link to it) previously, perhaps you should go back and read it.

He does in fact demonstrate these terms have changed.

P.S. Just because an organization has a lawyer does not mean they are not feeding their lawyer bad information and it does not mean the lawyer is primarily working support of a political agenda....

And where did you get the FSF is mistaken ? Even the post you refer to claims to have no factual basis, only an opinion. Yet you're sitting here stating as fact that the FSF is mistaken.

Again, let the involved parties sort it out and come to factual conclusions themselves before we start throwing around facts.



In the open source world, mailing lists are where you take 5 minutes to sit together and talk it through. The fact that blogs like Macrumors who really have no clue about how the open source world does thing, out in the open, pick up on this stuff and paint it as some kind of epic struggle doesn't really help the already open source challenged Apple community in getting a proper idea of what is really going.

Except of course that the Nokia member of the VLC team went directly to publicly asking that the Application be removed instead of discussing the issue with the other members of the team on a mailing list. It was not public because Macrumors made it so, or even /. for that matter. It was public because RMS and the Nokia developer had reasons that went well beyond some altruistic notion of the fair distribution of free software and more in the their own professional and political ambitions.

Paint it however you want, anyone who has spent any time dealing with the FOSS community understands the games that are going on. You sem to be trying to re-craft them for an audience you have decided may be unsophisticated enough to be manipulated. For the life of me, I can not figure out why.

JB has made his opinion (and confusion) perfectly clear, most of the VLC developers have endorsed the iPhone port. The waves are being created to serve other agendas, not the fair distribution of FOSS.

 

[BC2009]

Again, let the involved parties sort it out and come to factual conclusions themselves before we start throwing around facts.

I fully agree with you on that. Everything we throw around here is opinion. Even what the lawyers have to say is just an opinion until a judge makes a ruling or a settlement is reached. We should avoid claiming anything as fact with regards to this matter.

I think you nailed it when you pointed out that the big question is whether or not Apple, as a distributor of GPLv2-licensed application, would be required to open up iOS devices to allow free installation of modified versions of the application to the devices OR if they are only required to provide the source code to the application (or a means to get to it).

Essentially, Apple is restricting the redistribution of modified versions of the application to iOS devices; while nobody is restricting the creation of modified versions of the application to other devices or jailbroken iOS devices.

However, this should not be a new question for FSF. I have downloaded other apps that had GPL and LGPL terms for libraries they statically linked to. I don't believe Apple will act hastily on this and will have their lawyers take a good hard look at the GPL license versions in question.

You can also be guaranteed that if GPLv3 or GPLv2 does not cover this form of restriction that there will be a forthcoming GPL version that will. The FSF obviously cares about this.

My opinion.... the software in its current form is freely downloadable to any iOS device. The source code is freely available, and therefore modified forms can be created and distributed to other kinds of devices (even iOS devices via jailbreaking or going through Apple's channels). My basis - when Netgear used GPL source code for their firmware they had to provide the source code. They did not have to provide a means for the router to auto-update to modified versions of the firmware -- you still had to hack the router to make that happen.

 

[JordanNZ]

You're saying as a fact that the new policies would not cause confusion, so you're stating a fact that the new policies make it clear cut. Now you're also arguing there is no issue, so you're saying, as a fact, that the new policies are GPL compatible.

Facts no one in the VLC project have stated themselves, facts the FSF disputes (are you even sure that the OLD policies that they refer to have even changed ? Last I recall, the latest change was simply a loosening of the approval process, not some kind of shift in distribution and signing models).



The FSF has a lawyer on board though, so let's not be so quick to dismiss their arguments : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Moglen

Look. All I'm saying is that it's not clear cut. Things HAVE changed since the last issue they had. What this means we don't know yet!

 

[BC2009]

The FSF has a lawyer on board though, so let's not be so quick to dismiss their arguments : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Moglen

I'm not being quick at all. I fully recognize I could be wrong and I very interested in seeing how this plays out. When you become a distributor of GPL applications there are strings attached. It will be interesting to see how the strings apply here. If FSF wins out it would mean pulling quite a few apps from the app store -- not just VLC.

 

[D'Illusion]

I like how so many people have downloaded it just in case it gets pulled. If you had no use for it before why would you miss it if it gets pulled.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

I'm not being quick at all. I fully recognize I could be wrong and I very interested in seeing how this plays out. When you become a distributor of GPL applications there are strings attached. It will be interesting to see how the strings apply here. If FSF wins out it would mean pulling quite a few apps from the app store -- not just VLC.

It's up to the authors of the project to either use a GPLv2 or GPLv3 license.

 

[KnightWRX]

You can also be guaranteed that if GPLv3 or GPLv2 does not cover this form of restriction that there will be a forthcoming GPL version that will. The FSF obviously cares about this.

The FSF has cared for quite a while since the GPLv3 does address this very issue. See their stance on "Tivoization" and how it is addressed in the GPLv3.

My opinion.... the software in its current form is freely downloadable to any iOS device. The source code is freely available, and therefore modified forms can be created and distributed to other kinds of devices (even iOS devices via jailbreaking or going through Apple's channels). My basis - when Netgear used GPL source code for their firmware they had to provide the source code. They did not have to provide a means for the router to auto-update to modified versions of the firmware -- you still had to hack the router to make that happen.

Actually, I haven't quite found a router where cracking an encryption that could have run afoul of the DMCA until a little while ago (thank Congress for a rare display of sanity!). Most 3rd party firmwares use the vendor's provided facilities, even if these are low level TFTP updates or JTAG connectors to push their own firmwares. There isn't really anything that requires security holes to be exploited in order to make firmware installable on these routers.

The "Tivo" model is quite different and is why the FSF addressed it in GPLv3. How it relates to GPLv2 remains to be seen and again, this must be addressed by the VLC developers. A lot of people don't enforce certain sections of the GPL, see the Linux kernel itself as proof of that. You have the blessing from the kernel developers that you can "taint" the kernel with non-GPL'ed code, even though the GPLv2 technically prevents you from linking in modules that aren't GPL'ed themselves.

I'm not being quick at all. I fully recognize I could be wrong and I very interested in seeing how this plays out. When you become a distributor of GPL applications there are strings attached. It will be interesting to see how the strings apply here. If FSF wins out it would mean pulling quite a few apps from the app store -- not just VLC.

The FSF is not winning anything nor are they out to here. This is a lone developer acting on his own. If the FSF ends up being right about this developer's claims being, well, right, the only thing that will happen is that there will be a precedent other developers can use to have their apps pulled.

However, this isn't an automatic pull. Some might just decide to bless it, some might decide to relicense the project for the iOS port, etc.. Apple doesn't automatically have to pull every GPL app because the app store is not quite GPL compatible. This is up to the different copyright holders to decide.

 

[tjcampbell]

I like how so many people have downloaded it just in case it gets pulled. If you had no use for it before why would you miss it if it gets pulled.

Because you may have a use for it in the future.

 

[goosnarrggh]

The GPL V2 is completely unenforceable.

Take this clause for instance:

Not only is it incompatible with modern operating systems with dynamically loading libraries and platform frameworks...

Any dependency upon dynamically loaded libraries that would normally fit the definition of being a "system library" of the target operating system, are explicitly exempted from the GPL's requirements.

If a GPL program needs to depend upon any other 3rd-party GPL-incompatible library, then the FSF recommends that the original author of the GPL program ought to identify that dependency, and add an additional exemption clause to their in-house version of the GPL, to cover the use of that other library.

Personally, though, I don't necessarily agree with FSF's party line on the issue of dynamic linking. And, since the original author of the software is the only one with standing to file a complaint about somebody else's potential copyright infringements, it stands to reason that if they don't care about 3rd-party library linking issues, then nothing will ever come out of it.

...but by following the letter of this clause, you cannot upgrade the license of a product to GPL V3 because that license imposes "further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein".

Certain variants of the GPL contain a specific clause stating that any 3rd-party redistributor may choose to use GPL vX, or any future version, in the code they redistribute. This clause is the key item that makes it possible for 3rd-party redistributors to move on to a newer version of the GPL.

If the original application's author(s) did not choose to include that "or any later verison" clause, then you'd be right, 3rd-party redistributors would not be permitted to upgrade to a newer version of the GPL in the code they redistributed because doing so would result in the imposition of additional restrictions.

In any event, the original author of a piece of software (or authors collectively by consensus, in the case of a collaborative work), as the copyright holders, are free to choose to distribute the software under as many different licenses as they want. They are perfectly at liberty to distribute 50 copies of the exact same software to 50 different people under 50 completely different licenses, including both GPLv2 and GPLv3.

You cannot take a binary compiled for windows and run it directly on linux or OS X or visa versa. That is a restriction is it not? What about all of that software under GPL that only runs on and can only be compiled on linux due to dependencies? Does that software violate that clause?

The GPL (at least GPLv2, which is the one at issue for VLC) explicitly states that it is concerned solely with issues of copyright: ie, modification, copying, and redistribution. As long as you do not restrict the recipients' legal permission to modify the software, their legal permission to make duplications of the software, their legal permission to redistribute those duplications to others, and their legal permission to access the source code for no fee over and above what they may have already paid to access the binary format, you are complying with the GPL. The fact that certain pieces of software may be technologically incompatible with various different operating systems is irrelevant to the GPL as a copyright license.

Philosophically, but also totally irrelevant to the legal argument, the FSF reasons that the end recipient, having been given permission to modify the software, and having been given permission to access the source code upon request, could theoretically make the necessary modifications themselves, to allow it to run on whatever operating system they chose.

 

[chrisqmalibu]

Rémi Denis-Courmon works for Nokia

Rémi Denis-Courmon brought the GPL violation complaint to Apple. He works for Nokia.

http://www.remlab.net/

Welcome to Remlab.net! This is the home page of Rémi Denis-Courmont.

I am currently working as a Linux kernel and system software engineer for Nokia in Helsinki, Finland. I am also one of the core developers of the VLC media player at the VideoLAN project, the original developer of Miredo, the Teredo stack for Linux & BSD, and the maintainer of the minisap server and ndisc6 IPv6 utilities.

Chris
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NksXmYdji1A

 

[KnightWRX]

Rémi Denis-Courmon brought the GPL violation complaint to Apple. He works for Nokia.

This was posted back on page 1. It didn't matter then, it still doesn't now.

 

[ksgant]

It prevents him from stealing the code of others and closing it down for his own profit. Like Microsoft did with a lot of BSD code that made its way into Windows, with the copyright notice for the Regents of University of Berkeley hidden inside the binaries (ftp.exe being the most glaring example).

Who said anything about stealing code and closing it down? It's draconian in that the "freedom" the FSF keeps touting is a load of bull. Where's MY freedom of use this on any device I want...closed or open or otherwise? No one is stealing the code from VLC and closing it down charging for it...wtf are you talking about?

 

[centauratlas]

Exactly. Except he wants to reject the concept of intellectual property rights EXCEPT FOR HIMSELF, which is what the entire episode hinges on. In other words, he wants to be the party boss while everyone else works for him and follows his rules. The opposite of freedom.

The only thing you forget to add is that he is not just a tireless promoter of FSF, he is also a tireless promoter of himself. I too had interaction with him in the 1980s and was singularly unimpressed with the hypocrisy demonstrated. Animal Farm - the only intellectual property rights he wants enforced are his.

The problem I have with RMS is that his stance is basically communistic (I'm using that word in a descriptive, not a perjorative, sense). He basically rejects the concept of intellectual property rights. it's been about twenty years since I last interacted with him in person, but back then he was adamant about the idea that any code anyone wrote "belonged to the world". As far as I can see, he's always steered FSF in the direction of that philosophy (I have friends who've worked at FSF who can confirm that).

He is also a tireless promoter of the FSF itself - not necessarily a bad thing, for something good that you're passionate about. Sometimes, however, it's not good - can even get petty - anybody remember RMS's insistence that Linux should be called Gnu Linux?

 

[KnightWRX]

Who said anything about stealing code and closing it down? It's draconian in that the "freedom" the FSF keeps touting is a load of bull. Where's MY freedom of use this on any device I want...closed or open or otherwise? No one is stealing the code from VLC and closing it down charging for it...wtf are you talking about?

Again, it's not bull. It's very well defined. The Freedom granted by the GPL is that the code will always be Free of any restrictions that people might want to place upon it.

It is what it is. It's not draconian at all, since that implies negative connotation. The code will always be guaranteed to be opened, and any modifications made available for all to be able to use. But for that, you have to be actually able to use them, and the App Store policies might jeopardize this. Hence the current situation.

Keep on being ignorant instead of actually reading the FSF's position and understanding where it is they are coming from.

 

[ksgant]

Again, it's not bull. It's very well defined. The Freedom granted by the GPL is that the code will always be Free of any restrictions that people might want to place upon it.

It is what it is. It's not draconian at all, since that implies negative connotation. The code will always be guaranteed to be opened, and any modifications made available for all to be able to use. But for that, you have to be actually able to use them, and the App Store policies might jeopardize this. Hence the current situation.

Keep on being ignorant instead of actually reading the FSF's position and understanding where it is they are coming from.

Okay....how is the VLC code closed and not open, now that it's on the iPad? Can we still get the code? Are the modifications made available for all to use and see?

 

[KnightWRX]

Okay....how is the VLC code closed and not open, now that it's on the iPad? Can we still get the code? Are the modifications made available for all to use and see?

No, they aren't. That's the point. The developer in question here argues (and the FSF backs him up) that the code isn't free to be modified because anyone that wishes to do so will not be able to install and run their modifications without first going through Apple for approval.

This is an added restriction in this developer's eyes and is thus incompatible with the GPL as worded.

This has been explained about a thousand times already in this thread.

 

[deadkennedy]

Why do you need that? (TM)

 

[dexthageek]

The Free Software Foundation, promoting free software for everyone.

Wait...

But only if THEY have control over it!

What was Rémi Denis-Courmont trying to accomplish by contacting Apple on the supposed GPL violation.

I really do not see a violation here. The AppStore terms even state that if a developer includes their own EULA it overrides the default agreement set forth by Apple.

APPSTORE TERMS - LICENSE OF APP STORE PRODUCTS

...Your license to each App Store Product is subject to the Licensed Application End User License Agreement set forth below. You agree that the terms of the Licensed Application End User License Agreement will apply to each Apple Product and to each Third-Party Product that you license through the App Store Service, unless the App Store Product is covered by a valid end user license agreement entered into between you and the licensor of the App Store Product (the “Licensor”), in which case the Licensor’s end user license agreement will apply to that App Store Product. The Licensor reserves all rights in and to the App Store Product not expressly granted to you....

Another VLC developer wrote this analysis
http://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/vlc-devel/2010-November/077457.html

 

[KnightWRX]

But only if THEY have control over it!

What was Rémi Denis-Courmont trying to accomplish by contacting Apple on the supposed GPL violation.

I really do not see a violation here. The AppStore terms even state that if a developer includes their own EULA it overrides the default agreement set forth by Apple.

APPSTORE TERMS - LICENSE OF APP STORE PRODUCTS


Another VLC developer wrote this analysis
http://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/vlc-devel/2010-November/077457.html

Read the rest of the thread, all of this has been addressed. No matter how much Apple wants you to believe that your own license applies, the App store model is what is at fault specifically here.

As for Rémi, he's simply asserting his rights under copyright law. He made contributions in good faith that these would be GPL licensed and he's now seeing a GPL breach, in his opinion. The FSF seems to agree with his analysis.

Jean-Baptiste never said his post was an analysis, only his biased opinion. People are missrepresenting his comment.

 

[colinmack]

This was posted back on page 1. It didn't matter then, it still doesn't now.

Actually - I personally think it does matter.

[in my best legal voice...] "Your honour, goes to motive."

 

[nt5672]

All this just goes to show that one should stay as far away from GPL code as possible. Its not at all about freedom or this whole thread would not exist.

 

[dexthageek]

All this just goes to show that one should stay as far away from GPL code as possible. Its not at all about freedom or this whole thread would not exist.

I agree, why does it have to be so complicated. VLC is a free application, the source code is available for free. Why is the such a complicated license agreement required?

If the software was really free this would not be an issue.