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Published in News

VLC bloke takes on Apple

by on01 November 2010


Terms all wrong
The writer of VLC has taken on the might of the Apple faith by complaining that his media play is being distributed on iTunes under terms that contradict the GPL's conditions.

Rémi Denis-Courmont wrote to Apple to complain that his work was being distributed through their App Store, and prohibit users from sharing the program. He said that the VLC media player was free software licensed solely  under the terms of the  GNU General Public License. However those terms are contradicted by the products usage rules of the AppStore through which Apple delivers applications to users of its mobile devices.

Apple usually deals with such complaints by removing the software from the App Store. Rémi expects that Apple will do the same for this VLC port. However if Jobs'  Mob does this "users of iOS-based devices [will] be deprived of VLC media player, as a consequence of the intransigently tight control Apple maintains over its mobile applications platform."

Of course Apple does not really care about this and no doubt legions of Apple fanboys will tell the world that they don't want VLC anyway. But all Apple has to do is follow the license's conditions to help keep the software free. Instead, Apple has decided that they prefer to impose Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) and proprietary legal terms on all programs in the App Store.
Last modified on 01 November 2010
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