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Ultimate ironyUltimate ironyPosted Feb 18, 2009 0:12 UTC (Wed) by rickmoen (subscriber, #6943)In reply to: Ultimate irony by tgall Parent article: Apple: why iPhone jailbreaking should not be allowed tgall wrote: First link, SDK. Free. Knock yourself out. Let's see: Downloading the SDK requires first signing up as a "Registered iPhone Developer", right? That's what it says on the download page, and I see no other download options offered. iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, section 5, requires that developers' licensing "not purport to require Apple (or its agents) to disclose or make available any of the keys, authorization codes, methods, procedures, data or other information related to the Security Solution, digital signing or digital rights management mechanisms utilized as part of the Program". Sections 3.3.1, 3.3.2, and 3.3.4 impose severe limitations (1, 2) on what developed apps are allowed to do. Consequently, it seems to me, all iPhone apps are required to be proprietary (and doubly so under any copyleft licence with an anti-TiVoisation clause such as GPLv3) -- which explains why, among other things, even though there are four implementations of SSH for the iPhone, all of them ports of BSD-licensed code for *ix, not a single one of them is itself any type of open source whatsoever. Seems to me that denies "the possibility of running independent software on that platform" in any meaningful sense of that phrase (if that software is developed using the SDK). Am I missing something, or are you excluding open source from "independent software on that platform"? Rick Moen
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Ultimate irony Posted Feb 20, 2009 4:31 UTC (Fri) by tgall (subscriber, #217) [Link]
I'm not sure that the authors of the GPL would consider themselves an "Open Source License" as compared to a "Free Software License". Still, I'm splitting hairs.
You're entirely right the iPhone is not friendly to GPLv3, but neither are all open source developers friendly to GPLv3. <shrug>
Your links as to SDK limitations were spot on accurate a year ago. Life has evolved, significantly which was part of why I piped up on this business in the first place. The momentum appears to be that things are opening up and getting more reasonable. Perfect? Heck no. Better? Yes. Getting worse? No.
Now will Apple plunk people over the head with the DMCA? Who knows. If it's going after those cracking apps, I really don't have a problem with that. Average random tinkerer on the street different story. Like I mentioned, Apple did get the music labels to drop drm. Gotta give credit where credit is due.
Does any of this detract from getting rid of the DMCA? I sure hope not. These are the times for that kind of effect to get going. That's the far more interesting conversation.
Ultimate irony Posted Feb 20, 2009 11:34 UTC (Fri) by rickmoen (subscriber, #6943) [Link] tgall wrote:I'm not sure that the authors of the GPL would consider themselves an "Open Source License" as compared to a "Free Software License". That and $1.50 will get you a ride on Muni. Even as a friend of Richard's, I'm not impressed at he and others at FSF spewing up clouds of rhetoric every time someone refers to one of their licences (or codebases) as "open source", when it is simply a fact that they are such (among other things that they are). You're entirely right the iPhone is not friendly to GPLv3, but neither are all open source developers friendly to GPLv3. This seems entirely and in fact flamboyantly irrelevant to the discussion, unless you can show that those "open source developers" are placing legal bars to anyone's development of GPLv3 software on an entire class of hardware devices. More to the point, Apple, Inc.'s legal restrictions appear to bar Registered iPhone Developers from releasing pretty much any iPhone application under any open source licence. Thus, for example, my observation about the SSH ports. I really don't think that's coincidence. Your links as to SDK limitations were spot on accurate a year ago. I'm unclear on whether you're saying that those various points about the SDK (and about the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement) are no longer applicable. Are you? Which ones? I'd be grateful to hear a rundown on the current situation -- with citations. Now will Apple plunk people over the head with the DMCA? Who knows Um, why don't you ask the PlayFair / JHymn developers? They have a long record on this matter, and it's not good -- without even counting their very recent, already infamous testimony before the Library of Congress DMCA regulations committee. Like I mentioned, Apple did get the music labels to drop drm. Gotta give credit where credit is due. I notice you keep changing the subject from what I spoke of, which was Apple's active measures to prevent third party development of open source apps on iPhones and iPod Touches (at least using the SDK). Now, you say there's been some... change? Improvement? It's "evolved", anyway, and I look forward to hearing what that means, specifically. But, to address your gratuitously changed topic, yes, after making a ton of money retailing DRMed music tracks from the labels, they "got" some (hardly all of) the labels to allow them to make a ton more money selling upgrades to "iTunes Plus" variants of the same tracks, this time without the DRM. I expect that they did this not to save the world, but rather to increase shareholder value. So, if you're going to try to argue that they're on the side of the angels on account of one of their highly successful upgrade sales offers, you really should try that line, instead, on someone who can't read SEC reports. ;-> Rick Moen
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