Wesnoth struggles with App Store's GPL incompatibilities

All phones completely locked down -> some phones partially open -> some phones very open.

This is major progress in my book. Naturally, it does not mean that your concerns are invalid, but simply that I perceive the phone ecosystem as a whole as becoming more open, not less.

That being the case, I don't wee why GPL developers (and anyone else wanting to control distribution of their apps) would not pressure Apple to remove that silly inherent copy restriction, since it has nothing to do with their software that they (Apple) wrote, and it hardly seems vital to their business model. There are very good reasons for other non GPL devs to not like this policy and they should make apple aware of their concerns before simply assuming that Apple will never change. After all, I would not assume that Apple is not very scared of the real android threat to their current bread and butter (they would be stupid not to be, and they are not stupid). If lifting this simple restriction means that apple can appease a lot more users and devs, and fight off android a bit longer, why wouldn't they?

On a final note, it seems ironic that a game might actually be free software's killer app (the one over which this battle is fought) for the iphone! :)