Bonum Certa Men Certa

Apple Spits on Software Freedom



Summary: Apple's action in the face of GPL violations speaks volumes about the company's attitude

Apple has come under fire for GPL violations. The FSF accused Apple and provided specific details, at least in this followup post we have not yet mentioned.

Since our announcement yesterday that we were pursuing a compliance case involving GNU Go in Apple's App Store, we've received a lot of questions about the details of the conflict between the GPL and Apple's terms of service. For those of you who are interested, we're providing those details here.

Let's start by making sure everybody's on the same page: in order to use the App Store, you have to agree to the iTunes Store Terms of Service and/or the App Store Terms of Service. You can confirm this yourself just by reading the documents: they say as much in their all-caps preambles. The two documents are pretty similar; this post will give section numbers from the App Store Terms of Service, but the same language appears in the iTunes Store Terms of Service and so our analysis applies identically to it. You can read both those documents on Apple's site, and we have a copy of that page as it exists today to provide this commentary.


Apple's response? Here is how the evidence was handled:

Apple these days has a base strategy.

Killing an app because it has a GPL license and your store policies conflict with the GPL is a base strategy. The Free Software Foundation made a political complaint. Apple acted in the way of a base politician — if the other side hates it then it must be good.


Joe Brockmeier concludes:

It is disappointing that Apple took this route. The company could accommodate copylefted software, but chooses not to. The question is whether Apple's disdain for openness is going to cost it any significant business.


Apple is "leveraging open source" or to avoid euphemisms and put it more bluntly (as we did in our IRC channel this afternoon), Apple is just exploiting free (as in "free beer" in its own eyes) code.

“Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?”

--Steve Jobs

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft's Serial Strangler and Matthew J. Garrett Join Forces in Trying to Gag Techrights (for Exposing Microsoft Corruption and Crimes Against Women)
Whose terrible idea was it?
Free University of Bozen-Bolzano Proud to Host Free Software Talk by Richard Stallman
ahead of Monday's talk
Slopwatch: Anti-Linux Machine-Generated FUD (LLM Slop) From GBHackers, CybersecurityNews, and Guardian Digital, Inc (Google News Promotes Slop Plagiarism, Misinformation)
Companies that lie try to drown out the signal with falsehoods
 
Good Explanation of Why IBM Has Chosen to Conceal Mass Layoffs (of 'Expensive' Staff) as "R.T.O." (Even For People Who Never Worked at the Office to Which They're Ordered to "Return")
Many remaining IBM (or Red Hat) workers in Europe are in "cheaper" places such as Brno
Links 22/02/2025: Labour Department Investigates Microsoft Infosys Amid Mass Layoffs, Large Law Firms Caught Red Handed With LLM Slop (Defrauding Clients and Courts)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/02/2025: Analog Stuff, Sigil, and SSGs
Links for the day
Microsoft's Market Share in Cameroon Falls to New Lows
This means a lot of Android users (iOS is about 4 times smaller), but Android does not mean freedom
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 21, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, February 21, 2025
The Streisand Effect is Real
So don't be evil. Also, don't strangle women.
Links 21/02/2025: Linux Foundation Openwashing, Microsoft Copilot Goes Down
Links for the day
Links 21/02/2025: Doomscrolling and European Ham Radio Show
Links for the day
Links 21/02/2025: TikTok Layoffs, WebOS Software Patents in Bad Hands
Links for the day
Gemini Links 21/02/2025: Web Browsers, Mechanical Shortcuts, and Internet Hygiene
Links for the day
Richard Stallman 'Only' Founded the FSF
there's no reason to be upset at the FSF for keeping their founder in the Board
Techrights Disconnected From the United States Two Years Ago
Did people really need to wait for the US government to become this hostile towards the media before recognising the threat?
Before Trying Censorship by Extortion the Serial Strangler From Microsoft Literally Begged Us to Delete Pages
This is very clearly just a broad campaign of intimidation
Hype Watch: Weeks After Microsoft Disappointed Investors With "Hey Hi" It's Trying Some "Quantum" Hype (Adding Impractical Vapourware to Accompany This Hype and Even LLM Slop in 'News' Clothing)
Remember "metaverse"? What happened to media hype about "blockchain" and "IoT"?
Report About February Mass Layoffs at Microsoft (Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in 2025) Comes Back From the Dead
Yesterday we wrote about an article in CRN (reporting Microsoft layoffs) being removed without any reasons specified
Links 21/02/2025: Myanmar Scam Centre and Disruptions at USPTO
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, February 20, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, February 20, 2025
gbhackers.com is Not Hackers, It's LLM Slop Outputs (Fake 'Articles') That Attack 'True Hackers'
A site called linuxsecurity.com keeps doing this and now we see the slopfarm gbhackers.com doing the same
Gemini Links 20/02/2025: Law of Warming and Cooling, Health, and Devlog
Links for the day
linuxsecurity.com Continues to Spread Lies or Machine-Generated FUD (Microsoft LLMs Likely the Source) About OpenSSH and Linux
this LLM problem is global
Links 20/02/2025: Microsoft Infosys Layoffs and IRS Layoffs (Good News for Rich Tax Evaders)
Links for the day
IBM Layoffs in Europe Already Happening or Underway (UK and Spain). They Try Not to Call These "Layoffs".
"CIO" in particular was repeatedly mentioned lately, as was Consulting
People Who Came From Microsoft Demanding Removal of Articles About Them, About Microsoft, and About Microsoft GitHub is "Generous" (According to Them)
Imagine choosing a law firm that borrows money in the same year just to avoid overdraft in the bank!
Possibly a Third Round of Mass Layoffs at Microsoft in 2025 ("Cloud Solution Architects, Customer Roles"), Report Removed or Censored
This is literally the top story for "microsoft layoffs" right now
Instead of 'DoS Protection' Cloudflare is Allegedly Conducting 'DoS Attacks' on Users of Browsers Other Than Firefox and GAFAM's DRM Sandboxes (Chrome, Safari and Others)
If you value the Web, you will avoid Cloudflare
Mixing Real With Fake in One 'Article' (by "Director of Content, Help Net Security")
From what we can gather, he got machines to generate some slop for him
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, February 19, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, February 19, 2025