It would be ironic if you typed that on a mac or iphone.
The kernel to OS X/iOS is open source but this is not of any serious utility as far as I know :P
The main issue is that the GPL stipulates that the licensor cannot restrict distribution above and beyond the GPL's terms. Because apps must also be distributed under Apple's ToS, the app author would violate the GPL (e.g. due to DRM and regional restrictions).
Basically, this is Apple protecting their asses as well as the developer. Any downstream dev could sue you for using their GPL library (or at least force you off the app store). This is why build of VLC was yanked.
The FSF has a good article on it: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-...
I'm curious if a developer can incorporate GPL code in their app and make it available only on Google Play or the Amazon App Store while supplying the relevant source code (or object files) — but not making the unsigned/unprotected APK available to the public.
I guarantee that practically every app you use incorporates open source code. Blocking GPL doesn't seem to have hampered the amount of open source code written for the platforms, either. Look how many libs/projects target iOS!
Hell, I consider GPL to be hostile party in that arena. As an open source author, I want people to use my code; that's it. I don't give a damn if they open source their own code base or fork. That's their choice.
I have interacted with more than enough contributors on the "more loose" licenses. Plus, by going GPL you're effectively cutting off contributions from large companies that play in the OSS space (like Google)
I use BSD-2/MIT for my own work so I have to deal with not depending on libraries that are GPL-encumbered, but I still respect the GPL and think it's poor form for a platform to discriminate against it.
From my perspective, GCC was becoming a tangled mess of code due to politically-motivated sabotage by the FSF. Nothing like LLVM bitcode would ever have made it into GCC because it would make GCC too modular, and because the FSF not only supports open-source software but opposes closed-source software, it is against modularity (since someone could potentially distribute closed-source frontend to GCC, if it were modular). This is not mere speculation, people have tried to fix architectural issues in GCC in the past and been shot down for explicitly this reason. You could even say this behavior is hostile.
But this is nothing special. This is just another iteration of the conflict between BSD and GPL.
Same with GCC and GDB. If the GPLv3 is an unacceptable contract to Apple, they have a right not to agree to it. It's not exactly an uncontroversial license.
To be fair the problem with GCC isn't just GPL, v3 or otherwise. Apparently its design is deliberately convoluted to reduce modularity, making it harder for people to use parts rather than the whole, and the architecture also makes dynamic compilation much more difficult to implement than LLVM's tool chain (this was one of the key drivers, rather than the GPL thing).
Besides, the iOS App store is pretty crappy anyways.
While we might bemoan the walled garden model that Apple has picked and most people's seeming readiness to go along with it, you might be surprised at how many people would be interested in a store specifically "curated" towards GPL apps.
I'm okay with that: I don't really like the gpl. There is a very vibrant non-gpl OSS community around OS X and iOS.
BSD and such allow people the freedom to do almost anything with the code. Close it, leave it open, whatever. BSD grants you the freedom to deny a freedom.
The GPL attempts to preserve that freedom for people other than the current recipient. GPL denies you the freedom to deny a freedom.
The south has even songs about the "good ol' days" where slaves was working in the field. Plantation owners clearly saw the change as oppression, and a limitation on their freedom to operate ones house and businesses as one pleases.
The societies we live in have answered that denying a little personal freedom in order to protect the collective offers more freedom than the one in which that doesn't happen. There's no debate about that. Then, why are we still debating this?
Note that I'm not trying to suggest that I don't find open source software very compelling - just that the trade off doesn't make sense to me.
I'd rather be generally trusting of downstream devs; it pays more dividends in terms of goodwill (and subjectively, contributions).
You can say, "that takes away my freedom to restrict others" but that's like saying, "your law takes away my freedom to have slaves"
The GPL doesn't remove freedom except in one way, which is an unintended side-effect: incompatibility.
What the GPL actively restricts is POWER. What you want that the GPL blocks is not freedom, it's power.
> "your law takes away my freedom to have slaves"
Only the creation of more copies which are then distrusted out are considered as redistribution, and to be covered by copyright.
The fact that many geeks seem to think that the App Store reduces their freedom in any way beggars belief. You have the freedom to use other devices or create new devices that live outside this eco-system: your Grandparents and young children do not.
Get of your high-legged blinkered horse and take a look at the real users of the technology you no-doubt help create. They are exploited, patronised, ridiculed and blamed for merely wanting to share the most important technology of the last 200 years with us. Rather than try to include them we ostracise them and call them idiots.
Once again I was recently reminded why we need the App Store. I spent some of my weekend helping my ex and our 10-year-old son discover why his innocent use of his mothers' work laptop to look at a flash gaming site has caused her PhD thesis to become infected with a virus and all her emails to be sent back to her as containing malware.
Is it my ex's fault for letting our son use her work laptop? Is it his fault for not understanding the dangers of the internet? Is it her fault for not having the correct settings set or the correct anti-virus protection? Is it her department's IT guys' fault for not enforcing a stricter policy?
It's the fault of the fucking arseholes who write malware and deliberately target children and other computing novices by presenting them with ten choices of download button and flashing click-me-now popups that look like system controls.
Either that or it's my fault for not buying my sons an iPad.
Integral part of GPL is the ability for users to change their software, and Apple doesn't allow that (both for the reasons you stated and because... well, a work "monopoly" comes to mind ;).
Nicely put.
Some geeks accuse the App Store of eroding our freedoms (and the freedom of free software). I say that truly free software is a luxury that we geeks afford ourselves but make no real effort to share with the less-technical while we intellectually discount the mountainous problem of malicious software that makes non-geeks lives' a misery.
It is the latter that erodes the freedoms our our software not the the App Store.
Weight & measures, environmental health departments, competition commissions, ombudsmen.. etc. all erode some freedoms while protecting others. This is, sadly, a necessary trade-off.
The App Store is openly hostile to freedom, let alone FOSS.