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Comment by y2bd | Hacker News Reader

> please do not submit unmodified (or trivially modified) versions of this application to the App Store

I wonder how common this is for mobile applications.

Considering desktop applications, I've heard that many of the media conversion programs you find on sketchy websites are just reskins of Handbrake.

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I've heard that some people are already re-signing and successfully submitting other developer's binaries.

So, I suspect there will be some submitted clones eventually. It's possible Apple would reject them for being "too similar" (if they're paying attention).

On the other hand, it would be cool if someone used these as a starting point and built something unique.

Your latest version on the app store is only a few weeks old. You're still giving this love, right? Because this is possibly my favorite app of all time. If it goes away, I'm going to be very sad.

Clones always seem to get through. The open source Hacker News client news:yc[1] has had a lot of problems with this in the past. In chronological order:

https://twitter.com/newsyc_/status/291380036269899776

https://twitter.com/newsyc_/status/291385819799896064

https://twitter.com/newsyc_/status/303371858340884480

https://twitter.com/newsyc_/status/308312460551651328

https://twitter.com/newsyc_/status/315522279519961089

[1] http://newsyc.me

Very common, and even worse apple can only give two shits about what the original developer thinks.

What do you expect Apple to do?

These things are made open source under a permissive license. The whole point is that people can do what they want with the code.

A permissive license is the only one iOS apps can be released under. GPL and the App Store don't go well together (see https://www.fsf.org/news/2010-05-app-store-compliance)

That is not an answer to my question.

Not sure what your point is here. Seems to me that even if the FSF was happy with the app store, trivial forks and clones of OSS would reach the app store all the same, no?

I was actually talking about clones of closed-source applications.

Given that you were replying to a comment specifically about open source, that wasn't clear. Also if an app is closed source, you have to wonder how the cloner obtained the source in order to re-skin it? Is that sort of industrial espionage, or code decompilation of iOS apps common?

You also have to wonder how Apple would know? There are almost half a million apps on the App Store, detailed code analysis of the app binary and comparison with other compiled app binaries on the store is hard enough on an individual basis, and trivially defeated by code obscuration, let alone at app store scale.

What are you suggesting Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other store operators should be doing?

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