"There is plenty of GPL software available legally on Apple devices, particularly Macs. On iOS devices the conflict is the EULA only. The approval process has nothing to do with it. GNU/Linux distributions have approval processes too. More about how the EULA conflicts with the GPL: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-...
Apple didn't write the GPL.
And at this point, I'm reminded once again, never to debate facts with people advancing an ideology. You can have the last word.
It seems perfectly reasonable to me for a software author to say: I give this app away for free, and you can redistribute it, but you can't attach an EULA to my app if you do. If you, for some reason, are so pigheaded that you insist on adding no-reverse-engineering conditions to my app, which has no actual effect because the damn thing is open-source anyway, I'd blame you for the pointless ideological policy.
There's a box where you can paste in your own EULA during the upload process.
This makes the FSF advocates position completely asinine. Which is why I have difficulty taking any of them seriously. They don't even respect their own license, so why should I?
(Don't worry, I simply don't use GPL code, and don't release any code under the GPL.)
Yes, because it is that EULA that takes away our freedoms, not the GPL.
You can blame the GPL for being uncompromising in this respect, but the GPL came first. They could've made the EULA compatible if that was a priority. Google managed to, after all.
For many people, being forbidden to use a piece of hardware that you legally own in whatever way you want is an unacceptable intrusion on personal freedom.
There is a line to be drawn somewhere and different people may reasonably argue for drawing it at different places.
Because goverments like making up new rules and regulations.
Show me where, in Apple's EULA, it forbids GPLed code.