[PD] GPL vs. iPhone Appstore WAS: pd on ipad with externals

Hans-Christoph Steiner hans at at.or.at
Tue Aug 10 18:39:39 CEST 2010


On Aug 10, 2010, at 12:25 PM, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:

>
> --- On Tue, 8/10/10, Frank Barknecht <fbar at footils.org> wrote:
>
>> From: Frank Barknecht <fbar at footils.org>
>> Subject: Re: [PD] pd on ipad with externals
>> To: pd-list at iem.at
>> Date: Tuesday, August 10, 2010, 12:53 PM
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 11:07:55AM +0100, João Pais
>> wrote:
>>> but to make patches run, they have to be programmed in
>> vanilla,
>>> right? and it's not possible to do reatime control
>> like input
>>> numbers, or anything more than the touchpad control?
>>>
>>> or is it possible to use pd-ext in the iphone or ipod
>> maxi?
>>
>> As Cyrille wrote, it's mostly a political issue: AppStore
>> apps are
>> tied to the device and officially only available through
>> the AppStore.
>> This is some kind of DRM and many people don't consider it
>> compatible
>> with the GPL, at least not with the latest version.
>
> More specifically, the FSF considers the GPL incompatible with the
> ToS for the Itunes and App store:
>
> http://www.fsf.org/news/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl-enforcement
>
>>
>> To play it safe, the Pd in RjDj only contains the BSD parts
>> of Pd, no
>> [expr] etc. Some GPL stuff is included, like the rj
>> library, but that's
>> all written by Reality Jockey.
>
> What does authorship have to do with whether the Appstore ToS  
> conflicts
> with the GPL?


The GPL is a license to use copyrighted material that you otherwise  
would not have any legal right to use.  If the author of GPL software  
posts their software to the appstore, it could be read as a implied  
statement that the author is not going to enforce all aspects of the  
GPL.  An explicit statement to that effect would be better.

If you don't own the copyright, then that is not your decision to make.

.hc



----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally  
for machines to execute.
  - from Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs




More information about the Pd-list mailing list