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Comment by nirvana | Hacker News Reader

Right, so because someone adopted a license, the GPL, that forbids distributing the software under the EULA, you guys are going to blame the EULA, rather than the GPL? And then say that it is Apple's fault?

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.

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I don't see any real reason, apart from ire for the GPL, for Apple to insist on attaching its EULA to the app (as opposed to the use of the platform, say, which is GPL-compatible), for a free-software app where the author doesn't want to add a EULA, and where the source code is freely available. The purpose of the EULA for proprietary apps is to ban various kinds of reverse-engineering/piracy, which is a pointless thing to ban if the source and app are given away and the app author doesn't care about reverse engineering.

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.

As someone who's just had their app approved this very day, Apple don't force their EULA on you.

There's a box where you can paste in your own EULA during the upload process.

Can you just paste the GPL in there? If so, I'm not sure why there'd be an incompatibility. Or is it not incompatible anymore?

As I pointed out, the incompatibility is on the part of the GPL, not Apple. It is Stallman who has decreed that they are incompatible, and then turned around and blamed Apple for the incompatibility.

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.)

> Right, so because someone adopted a license, the GPL, that forbids distributing the software under the EULA, you guys are going to blame the EULA, rather than 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.

As a user, i want to have the freedom to install whatever i want on my device, gpl, bsd or not. apple creates an eula to stop me from doing anything i want on my own device.

So don't use Apple hardware. Simple.

Not so simple. Let me illustrate in increasing levels of absurdity: if Peach Inc. tried to, say, claim property of any data or content authored, produced or processed with any of their devices, and forbid you from using them in the loo because it damages their image, and claims rights on the organs of your firstborn child when you open some DVD shrink wrap, etc. etc. and I find that aberrant, there is a point at which "so don't use Peach hardware" doesn't settle the issue.

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.

"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." So don't buy hardware with those restrictions! For all the acknowledged absurdity of your opening (there are laws that exist to prevent that sort of thing), the fundamental fact of the matter is that as a consumer, you are free to choose not to buy something. If the market doesn't offer what you want you have two options; the obvious one is to do without. The other option is to develop your own.

My point is, why are there laws that exist to prevent the sort of absurd things I propose? That is, why isn't "if you don't like it then don't buy it" sufficient in those cases?

There is a line to be drawn somewhere and different people may reasonably argue for drawing it at different places.

> My point is, why are there laws that exist to prevent the sort of absurd things I propose? That is, why isn't "if you don't like it then don't buy it" sufficient in those cases?

Because goverments like making up new rules and regulations.

As the recent jailbreak exception shows, you are not legally forbidden from doing anything you want with the device you own.

No they don't. Stallman decreed that the GPL was not compatible. Apple never did.

Show me where, in Apple's EULA, it forbids GPLed code.

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