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Comment by Wowfunhappy | Hacker News Reader

Apple has been (I suspect purposefully!) dragging their feet on progressive web app support. There list of limitations is long, but most critically for this app (I would imagine), they can't send notifications and they can't work offline.

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There are a number of interesting use cases for PWAs, but part of Apple's fear is (potentially) many of their clients will migrate to PWA only, reducing App Store revenue severely.

Apple also loses all code auditing and screening, meaning they can't ban GPL licensed PWAs like they ban alternative Linphone builds (as they are GPLv2), Signal Private Messenger builds (GPLv3) and only the official developer can build and submit these apps to the app store.

Apple's GPL ban also effiectively mandates these apps having broad CLAs to ensure they can relicense the code for use in the Apple App Store.

Edit: removed bonus apostrophe

> many of their clients will migrate to PWA only, reducing App Store revenue severely

This was also the music industy's fear of digital data about 20-30 years ago.

The business model is outdated, Safari purposefully being a laggard with no alternatives on iOS will eventually bite Apple in the butt, it is just a question of when.

Both the Music industry and Apple seek to maintain their control and thus their cash cows, but whether that will continue to work out for Apple remains to be seen...

> The business model is outdated

And what is it's replacement? It seems in app purchases are what keeps up a large part of mobile apps.

iTunes changed the music business, but I have not noticed a similar change for mobile apps, web or not.

SaaS and Entertainment as a service are the replacements, hence Apple Music and their new streaming service. This is also why AT&T, Verizon, Sinclair and Comcast have spent the last half decade buying media companies.

Why does there need to be a replacement? Apple already sells the hardware and their software (iOS and the preinstalled apps) and makes money off of that.

If I make my app available via my website as a PWA, and all the hosting costs are my own, and don't use any of the app store's services, why does Apple deserve a share of the in app (in PWA?) purchases?

What interest would Apple have in banning GPL-licensed web apps?

Of that I am not certain, but Apple has banned VLC and many other apps, and continues to ban any GPL code from the app store: https://www.fsf.org/news/2010-05-app-store-compliance

I've used VLC on Apple products (phone, tablet, laptop) for years. I can't remember a time it wasn't available. Do you mean some VLC other than the video/media playing application?

VLC had to relicense to LGPL to make that happen: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLC_media_player#History

They do that to "protect" their DRM and application support libraries from GPL virality which wouldn't be a problem with PWAs

GPL virality does not apply backward from app to platform. There are loads of GPL apps on Windows and on Mac outside the app store.

VLC was removed because a VLC developer (copyrightholder) asked them to. Specifically, they alleged apple did not have the rights to distribute VLC unless they also allowed users to modify / recompile the software.

There is a way for end users to modify their software now, but I don’t know if it would satisfy that developer. VLC relicensed to make clear they don’t require distributors to do this.

More details from FSF the next day:

https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store...

More details here:

http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/

[…]

Anyway, the message is pretty obvious: Apple won’t ship anything that’s licensed under GPL v3 on OS X. Now, why is that?

There are two big changes in GPL v3. The first is that it explicitly prohibits patent lawsuits against people for actually using the GPL-licensed software you ship. The second is that it carefully prevents TiVoization, locking down hardware so that people can’t actually run the software they want.

So, which of those things are they planning for OS X, eh?

I’m also intrigued to see how far they are prepared to go with this. They already annoyed and inconvenienced a lot of people with the Samba and GCC removal. Having wooed so many developers to the Mac in the last decade, are they really prepared to throw away all that goodwill by shipping obsolete tools and making it a pain in the ass to upgrade them?

This for stuff that ships with their OS, mostly.

The GPL v3 prevents things like the Novell/Microsoft deal to "patent license" Linux.

The consequence is that Apple can't merely settle to solve patent disputes for any included GPLv3 component, but has to find a way to have the upstream component (and all deviations) have free use of the patent.

I’ve been looking at the App Store Guidelines recently and I don’t see much in them that seems to block GPL specifically. Maybe it’s OK now?

If you have citations of GPLv2 or GPLv3 apps that are in the App Store, I would be highly interested.

As far as I can discern, Linphone is provided in the App Store under a proprietary license, VLC had to relicense as LGPL, and GNU Go is still not on the App Store.

I don’t think anyone’s tried it, because it was certainly not allowed a couple of years ago. But the language that the FSF used to point to is no longer there, so I’d like to hope that it might be possible today.

My understanding is that Apple doesn't ban GPLvX code - that doesn't mean other people won't write Apple and ask the app to be removed, claiming the app developer did not have proper copyright license.

VLC-iOS is licensed GPLv2. https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc-ios/#license

The App store version is almost certainly using MPLv2, which is a file based copyleft license. Much weaker than GPLv2.

It’s not so much that it’s banned; it’s that because the GPLv3 allows users to modify their software and Apple doesn’t without their developer licenses, you can’t give the user all the freedoms the license provides.

Apple hasn't banned GPL apps. It would be more accurate to say GPL bans Apple.

You don’t need progressive web apps to display markers on a map.

And anyway, a PWA should be actually progressive. If it requires all the features it’s the opposite of progressive.

You’re referring to Progressive Enhancement, where you make sure it works on old devices but only new devices get the enhancements.

It's pitiful there hasn't been a widely adopted open source notification framework like linux is to OS. Apple and Google both implement their own and it gave them overwhelming power over the app developers. Ironically, this framework may start in China as while majority of the people use Android they have no access to G-suite, apps develop their own notifications and eats up tonnes of RAM, this will neatly solve that problem.

Apple is the one holding up Web Push on iOS at this point, Chrome, Firefox, Edge and a number of other browsers support it: https://caniuse.com/#search=push

> Apple has been (I suspect purposefully!) dragging their feet on progressive web app support.

The original point was that apparently there are no "work arounds" not mentioning that it could be done via WebApp seems a little disingenous.

The statement is referring to the user, there is no practical "work around" for getting their previously functioning, natively executing application operational again, on a computer they supposedly own.

Pointing out a "work around" for the developer is meaningless, in terms of "hey! they can reimplement it as a web app to bypass Apple's shitty walled garden!" is completely useless to these folks in HongKong right now.

I meant, there's no workaround for getting native software that has the capabilities of native software. If web apps were similarly capable I'd agree with you, but as it stands they aren't anywhere near equivalent.

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