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curt15

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

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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?

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.

This for stuff that ships with their OS, mostly.

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

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.

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.

More details from FSF the next day:

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

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