Windows Phone Marketplace bans the GPL, and the App Store should too | Hacker News Reader

Windows Phone Marketplace bans the GPL, and the App Store should too

arstechnica.com

20 pointssoofaloofa13 comments

I don't see why anyone should have a problem with this. Microsoft is well within their rights to disallow software with certain licenses in their store, just as developers are well within their rights to not use the GPL in their libraries. If it's really so egregious and untenable, developers will go elsewhere.

It's just another case of Free Software advocates trying to push their philosophy on consumer-facing software by sensationalizing the "bad guys" policies (i.e. Apple and Microsoft). Free Software != Open Source.

"It's just another case" of very complex software licenses which depend on nontrivial assumptions about distribution and runtime architecture meeting up with equally complex business requirements and legal agreements.

It's so weird how so many comments are from people completely convinced that this a result of some grand scheme by MS to destroy "Open Source".

Apple should ban explicitly GPLv3 software. v2 is likely compatible with the idea of an appstore with some tweaks to the license agreement.

I find the story like this: Microsoft is shooting itself in the foot.

Open source software is something both Microsoft and Apple should embrace. If I were them, I would devise a way to enable even GPLv3 apps to coexist.

Open source != GPL licensed apps. I know little about MS embracing open source, but regarding Apple check out these: http://www.apple.com/opensource/ , http://opensource.apple.com/ If I got it right Apple has little problems with GPL apps on App store, GPL proponents have.

By enforcing user-hostile policies, Apple has aligned themselves as an enemy of the GPL, even if they want to pretend they are still cozy with open source.

The GPL (especially v3) is user-hostile because it comes between developers and their customers. When my mom uses her computer, she doesn't give one lick about the source code behind her word processor. She's more than happy to trade a little bit of money for a product that just works, and is easy for her to use. Fulfilling these goals while taking advantage of the latest technology takes money, so she happily pays. She has no interest in the "freedoms" offered by the GPL - she just wants to get her work done and get on with her life.

I don't think my mom is less of a person (morally or otherwise) for being this way. We're not fools because we freely choose to pay a little bit of money for a lot more convenience in our lives. Nor are we trading any freedom^ - if we were to someday not like the terms we agree to today, we're always free to buy or use something else in the future.

^This is something that Stallman (and a lot of other people get wrong). The concept of freedom only applies to individuals, not to groups. Individuals have the right to assemble into groups, but groups do not have any special rights aside from the aggregate of the individual rights of its members. By using regular software that we freely pay for, my mom and I are not harming anyone. Stallman claims that we are!

No, they've both chosen a distribution model which is incompatible with any software containing GPLv3 code. Sure, if the code is 100% yours, you can do whatever you want with it since you own the copyright. But if it has ever accepted contributions from anybody else under GPL terms, then it can't be done without breaking those terms.

They could work out a process for developers who want to contribute GPLed apps, but they've decided not to.

This has very little to do with open source and everything to do with Free Software. I get that you can normally conflate the two, but in this case the distinction is crucial.

MSFT is totally happy to use BSD licensed code in it's own products - but GPL code might compete with it's products.

If GPL code was going to compete with Microsoft's products, it would be competing with Microsoft's products already.

In some cases it is (particularly in the infrastructure department), but in many cases it is not in any significant way.

Linux, Samba, OpenOffice etc not competing with MSFT?

They claimed they were in their market statements

The article claims that this is irrelevant and that you cannot distribute a GPLv3 app for iPhone/Windows Phones anyway (read "tivoization"), because of the license restrictions itself. Whatever Microsoft says.

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