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Comment by verisimilitudes | Hacker News Reader

My first thought, upon seeing this is licensed under the GPLv3, is that it wouldn't be legal to run under iOS, as the Tivoization aspect would come into play. However, as there is but one author, this issue doesn't materialize, although the sole author is the only one who can legally submit this to run under any machine, barring that private app exception I'm rather certain someone would mention if I didn't first.

It's nice that you've chosen the GPL, as I also prefer that license, but what value do you see in this software that only you can modify for use? Do you intend to release an Android or other port, at some point?

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Thank you for the comment. I learned a few things about licensing. The main reason I chose GPL was because I don't want someone else building a commercial closed source application based on my app; others can still fork the project and modify it.

I don't intend to release this app on any other platform but others who want to may feel free - I think GPL allows for this. In the end, I don't really care what others do with my app as long as they consult me about what they want to do with it, which MIT is too loose for. If others want to release an app based on mine, they can feel free.

> The main reason I chose GPL was because I don't want someone else building a commercial closed source application based on my app; others can still fork the project and modify it.

GPL is generally the best choice for that.

> In the end, I don't really care what others do with my app as long as they consult me about what they want to do with it

There’s no popular license that I know of that requires people to tell you about their fork. They can just release it and publish the code along with it.

Sure there is: CDDL. It requires one to give the changes back, as opposed to passing them to whoever they distribute to.

For anyone else unfamiliar with that term:

> Tivoization is the creation of a system that incorporates software under the terms of a copyleft software license, but uses hardware restrictions to prevent users from running modified versions of the software on that hardware. [...] Stallman believes this practice denies users some of the freedom that [GPL] was designed to protect.

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization

Apple doesn't allow GPLv3 code if there are multiple contributors? I thought they didn't allow GPLv3 code at all (and that this app required you to compile and install it as as a developer .. never had an eyeProduct so I'm not even sure what the dev process is like).

If there's a single author, they own ultimate copyright to the code and can submit it to the app store under a different license.

Just to clarify for the developer, thasian, because you have all rights in the code you can license it differently to different users. The version on github will be gpl; you presumably could have different license for app store purchasers. I think the ios port of Vim is done this way, it's github link is https://github.com/terrychou/iVim . Not sure if that's actually the way terrychou did it, but surely you could ask him about it.

In that case, what license should I change to? As long as others who want to release an app based on my source code consults me about it, I will let them.

I see nothing wrong with GPLv3 here; what exactly is the problem? Tivoization doesn’t make sense because people can just recompile the app themselves and install it.

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