Hacker News Reader

Comment by Vivtek | Hacker News Reader

As long as the code is available, I don't see why the DRM should matter. As noted elsewhere in this thread, it would be great if the FSF could provide a more detailed analysis of what the AppStore distribution is lacking. As it is, it seems this would just make developers more worried about the GPL.

View on HN

From what I understand, Apple is a distributor - not just the original developers.

Because Apple is distributing they have the same responsibilities as any distributor to provide the source code and allow the code to be shared.

And making people worried about the GPL shouldn't be a priority here. The GPL isn't a free-for-all license - its a very specific license which, while granting a lot of rights, also has a lot of requirements. Anybody distributing code with such a license needs to make sure they fall in line.

If the author of the app provided a link to a full source code download in the app itself and on the appstore page, wouldn't that make the whole thing compliant, at least in spirit, with the GPL? Everybody would be able to download the source, build/modify it themselves and run it in the emulator and if they have a developer certificate install it on their phone.

I guess that's what I'm getting at, yeah.

As it was said above, it's not the distribution that is the problem, it is the addition of license terms which the GPL forbids.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com