FSF takes on Apple's App Store over GPL

apple claims to be checking lots of stuff with their review, they claim it's because they want only 'good stuff' in the store (and their policy of pulling any app that they want to adds to this)

as such it seems perfectly reasonable to say that if they are policing the store to make sure that all 'bad stuff' is kept out, they are saying that what they let in must be 'good stuff'

If they don't want to be in this position (and be able to say "don't blame us, we only run the system and sell the phones") then they need to not work as hard 'approving' apps (which in practice mostly seems to be arbitrary rejection of apps that annoy someone at apple)

I don't think Apple doing any "GPL enforcement" or "checking whether the application infringes on GPL software" is in any way relevant here.

What is relevant is that they should check the license of software they distribute through the app store, and make sure that they, themselves, comply with it.

If the license of the software they accept is under the GPL, Apple should realize they cannot distribute it in a way that requires the end user to comply with additional restrictions (such as the mentioned limitation of installation on five devices), and should either change their policies and do not impose any such restrictions, or, doing as they often do, and not accept the software into their store.

This is correct: Apple does not review the source code for apps submitted to the iTunes App Store, nor do they require developers to submit sources. They probably should be treated like a Best Buy, but the "free software movement" doesn't make this distinction: the recent SFLC enforcement action against WalMart is a similar situation.

Indeed. There were many ways to write this article; choosing Lefty's blog as a unifying theme is disappointing.

I'm wondering whether this is the same "Xav" who made a public issue of the email client I happened to be using to post to the foundation-list a week or so ago. You'd seem to show a similar inclination to deal with minutiae rather that issues.

Why would the FSF go after Best Buy?

http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2009/12/best-buy-law...

Bingo. Likewise if Best Buy started selling proprietary software in violation of its license.

You've hit exactly the right point: nobody is exempt from copyright. This is why all of these arguments about the GPL being unenforceable seem idiotic to me. You comply with the license, which in most cases means you comply with the relevant sections of USC -- or whatever alternate license has been approved by the rights holder. Only the holder has a right to the software they create; rights are reserved by default. A selectively permissive copyright license is functionally no different, even though it makes other legal allowances and restrictions than the defaults. Nobody has a right to the code in any form otherwise, and I sincerely doubt any GPL enforcement case falls under a situation where a "resolution of necessity" would have been reasonable to justify appropriation and license violation. There's always an option: comply with our license for our software, comply with someone else's for their software, or write and license your own software.

sure they should've responded. The question is: how. From what I've heard, Apple was willing to comply and work with them. Until they nailed them publicly to the wall of shame. Now Apple won't work with them for the next 10 years or something. How was that helpful?

Straight from the article:

"In it, he says that the particular license violation that FSF brought up with Apple was section 6 of the GPLv2, which states that a redistributor of the licensed program may not impose further restrictions on the recipients to copy, distribute, or modify the program. Apple's App Store terms of service do impose several restrictions, such as limiting usage of the program to five devices approved by Apple."

What is not clear about that (copy/distribute)?

Section 6 of the GPL does say: "You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein." Of course, this clause, literally interpreted, is unreasonably broad; I assume the FSF won't give me the passwords to their web servers so that I can overwrite their web site with copies of GPL software the FSF distributes, despite the fact that the GPL gives me the right to make and distribute these copies, and the FSF is preventing me from doing so in a particular way. And it's also obvious that, if a GPL-licensed binary has been copied into a computer's instruction cache, and this copy may be executed and is provided to the user in this fashion, but cannot be copied back out to memory or registers from there, nobody is violating the license.

Apple may be able to argue that they can restrict the use of the contents of an iTunes account as a whole, and that if you want to put the binary on something else, you have to get it there via a different path; the FSF would probably have a good case that Apple, in order to comply with the GPL, needs to provide the binary in some way that allows it to be redistributed in order for them to be allowed to also provide it in a way that's not exportable.

I'm not actually sure what the FSF would want Apple's initial response to be, considering that that didn't intend to distribute GPL software and their site doesn't have support for actions necessary to comply with it. I assume that FileHippo would similarly take down a file that was just an executable built from GPL sources, lacking a mechanism for accompanying it with anything and therefore unable to comply with the notification requirements.

For clarity: I live in the Bay Area. I am an Apple shareholder. (Hey, a couple shares counts!) I do not own any Apple products. (They're freakin' expensive!) I use Lucid on a GIGABYTE GA-880GMA-UD2H, AMD Phenom-II X6 1055T, 4GB of OCZ Gold DDR3-1600 memory for ~$400. I'm a sysadmin. I work at Ames.

I've taken apart many Apple products. I've also seen them in pretty bad shape. (Ever seen a powerbook run over by an SUV? It *still* booted. Ethernet & External monitor, 100% data recovery on it's own power.)

Their engineering is without a doubt, top notch. They take control of *ALL* aspects of their product, better than *ANY* company I've ever seen. They have some tremendously gifted software and hardware engineers working for them. They have willingly, and with total forethought, built themselves a walled garden; and are aggressively defending their marked territory. It's theirs. They built it on practically giving people the finger and telling them, do it our way or get out. Right upfront and straightforward-like. Total honesty. You know _exactly_ where you stand with them.

They've engineered a extremely impressive and powerful unix based system that works in total harmony with their ecosystem of products. While you are in their walled garden, you are agreeing to have them act on your behalf in ways other companies simply do not have the cojones to even attempt. Bust up your ipad, or macbook pro? Applecare's got you covered, with some of the friendliest tech-help you can pay for. And man, is it ever expensive.

But if you're amenable to their terms, they offer a much stabler ecosystem than their market competitor, Microsoft. When Apple says their product does something, IT DOES IT. WITH STYLE. THE FIRST TIME. AND EVERY TIME. And easy enough for pretty much anybody to use. With Microsoft? Welll.... It's sort of a crapshoot. Will it work? Will it bluescreen? Is this driver signed? What's this executable in my tempfolder?
"AntiVirus 2010"? Sounds promising.

And yet, Apple are incredibly generous with what they develop; giving us massive amounts of very very well-tested and ingeniously designed software, with more open source license terms than ours. "Hey, do whatever, man, just don't take our name off. No strings."

Boot Camp has it's own ToS that basically lets Apple off the hook when they're not in control of the system. This is a very neon-sign obvious, and very intentional 'backdoor' right down to the hardware, unlocked and fully open. But you're own your own if you go that route, and they make this abundantly clear. Abundantly clear as in "Secret Hideouts" in children's cartoons. The ones with the giant neon signs stating that in fact, the building below it is indeed either a Secret Hideout of some nefarious character or the Secret Hideout of the heroic character.

The iPhone and it's larger cousin, the iPad, are appliances. They are not computers. Apple has *EVERY* aspect of them covered in-house but the applications, where they only *want* to go so far, making sure people make good use of what was engineered for them to be 'accepted' into the App Store.

This is their way.

We have our own way; and the viral nature of the GPL can be both a blessing and a curse. We stand for things other than they do; we believe in total openness and freedom, and stamped that freedom down in stone as well. We stick to our guns just as they stick to theirs. We have just as much right to do it our way as they have to do it their way. It's not a competition, we don't have to 'recruit' people, it's simply a choice. Allowing someone to make a choice by bringing Open software in front of them and letting them weigh the benefits for themselves without coercion.
That is freedom. Making choices for yourself.

We don't choose to be better than everyone else.
We simply aim to do the best we can for ourselves and manage to overachieve for others.

But hey, it works for us. It's our itch -- We tend not to cater to people that aren't computer users like ourselves; Apple does. They're good at that. And better yet, they're successful at it.

I can put it like this.
You can hand someone an iPad and tell them "touch this" and they will be fully engrossed in exploring it for hours because of it's fluidity and distinct lack of 'computer pain'.

You can hand the same person practically any other modern touch based device, and it's impossible to shut them up about every little flaw in it.

Except maybe a Nintendo. But if you peer into their history, they paved the way for the same type of successes Apple is seeing now. A focus on fluidity and immersion is a core part of the Nintendo experience, and it always has been. Their quality and attention to detail keeps people both old and young coming back to their products. Apple's trying to give people the same timeless appliance quality as the venerable Super Nintendo.

And going about it in much the same way ;)
Golden Nintendo seal of quality, anyone?

Whether or not David Schlesinger approves of the FSFs action or that companies like 'best buy' are considere distributors:

The legal situation is quite clear. Even if you are a retail store that is selling some products containing software (either on CD/DVD, or on flash memory inside an embedded product): You are bound by copyright law and you need to make sure you have the right to distribute those copies.

If that is practical or not, it is an existing legal situation. And it is in many cases the only way how to ensure GPL compliance at all, e.g. if those retailers buy directly from a foreign vendor, or they buy from a source that is unknown - the only lead is to go after such distributors.

The claims you may have against them might be different than against the original infringer (if there is such an entity), but still you can ask them to stop their behavior in violation of copyright.

"dark" is correct: there's nothing in the GPL to suggest that one gets a pass because binaries are "unaltered". Apple didn't alter the binaries it received from Robota Softwarehouse, either.

I'm not sure I understand this complaint. Having a significant degree of expertise in the legalities of open source licensing, as I do, should raise my criticisms a little above "some people say".

Beyond that, if you're looking for "balance", maybe you can ask the FSF's Chief Compliance Engineer Brett Smith why he hasn't replied to my original emailed questions on this subject, nor to the couple of follow-up "pings" I sent him.

There isn't a lot of "speculation" required here: there's been bad blood between the FSF and Apple for years, entirely at the FSF's instigation. As I've mentioned, Richard Stallman told audiences for some two years that Apple had a "secret back door" in OS X, right up until the point where he was apparently "persuaded" by someone (and my money's on Apple's Legal department) to fully retract that claim and to offer a full apology, on the FSF web site, to Apple for having made defamatory statements about their business that he couldn't back up with a single shred of evidence other than "some people say".

Funny Thing. When you consider that and also the completely unprecedented nature of an "enforcement action" which requires not one, but two, high-profile blog entries on the FSF's site, something which—to the best of my knowledge—has never happened before, you have to wonder a little why Apple is getting such "special treatment" here.

I was hoping that a response from Brett Smith might clarify the FSF's position on GPL-licensed software in Google's Android Market and Microsoft's Windows Marketplace for Mobile. So far, no such response seems forthcoming from the FSF.

Well said - I'm very tempted to get an iPhone, but the idea of supporting a closed model for phones and ultimately computers and 'content' (i.e. a closed Internet mediated mostly by 'apps' that go through an app store) still puts me off. And Android deserves some support as the closest rival to iPhone/iOS, and seems quite usable overall.