Summary: Apple's arrogance is costing it dearly and Apple continues to exclude GPL-licensed software from its store; the Linux-based MeeGo shows early signs of expansion

ACCORDING TO this subscribers-only article from LWN, Apple is again going head-to-head with GPL-licensed software. Linux.com has this snippet from the article:

In light of the recent GPL compliance complaint made by the Free Software Foundation against Apple's App Store, which sells and distributes software for Apple gadgets, it was probably inevitable that other problem applications would surface. While there are various opinions on whether the App Store can legally distribute GPL-covered binaries...

Apple is infinitely arrogant. It has been like this for a long time, even before its resurgence. Apple could easily allow GPL-licensed software to be put in its "Store" and then actually comply with the licence. It's not hard. As Bradley Kuhn (SFLC and FSF) put it some days ago, Apple still pretends to be open, whereas Motorola is at least frank and upfront about its hostility towards handset freedom in Android.

Curiously enough, Apple is currently annoying competitors by pointing fingers at them as 'damage control' for the hypePhone 4 cockup [1, 2].

Handset world: Don't speak for us, Steve Jobs

[...]

Hui-Meng Cheng, chief financial officer at HTC, told The Wall Street Journal on Monday that "the reception problems are certainly not common among smartphones," and a representative from Samsung said that it "hasn't received significant customer feedback on any signal reduction issue for the Omnia 2," one of the phones that Apple singled out as suffering from similar reception issues if held in a way that blocks the antenna.

If Apple's goal is to alienate people and parts of the industry, then it's doing pretty well. Let's wish it the best with this elitist strategy.

Apple's big competitor in phones at the moment is Android, but as we argued some days ago, there are other Linux-based contenders, including the world's leader which is Nokia. At Nokia, Android is a forbidden word because they work on MeeGo and this new press release is an encouraging sign of growth for MeeGo, which is less restrictive than Android and thus more worthy of advocacy. Dirk Hohndel spoke about MeeGo at OSCON (keynote).

Today is the first day of the main OSCON event here in lovely Portland, Oregon, and we were fortunate to have a MeeGo presentation during the opening keynotes. Here is a brief summary of what Dirk Hohndel covered during his time on stage.

Sadly, one of MeeGo's backers is Intel, which is corrupt for reasons we mentioned in the previous post. Intel bribes, lies, obstructs justice, colludes, and even attacks charities like OLPC. Nokia's main problem is just its policy regarding software patents and DRM (none of which is a crime, just an ethical issue). Let's keep MeeGo Microsoft-free. ⬆