Pidgin

[Dave Warren]

On 2014-06-18 12:43, Frank Lanitz wrote:
> Am 18.06.2014 21:19, schrieb Dave Warren:
>> On 2014-06-18 11:59, Frank Lanitz wrote:
>>> Am 17.06.2014 22:05, schrieb Dave Warren:
>>>> On 2014-06-17 13:00, Samir Shah wrote:
>>>>> Is there a iPhone version planned? thanks!
>>>> I don't speak for the developers, but in short, no.
>>>>
>>>> The libraries and resources used by pidgin aren't available on iOS, and
>>>> due to the multitasking limitations imposed by iOS, the experience would
>>>> be quite limited (it would only really work while the app is in the
>>>> foreground or for a short period in the background)
>>> Another topic is the licence demandings of Apples app store, which is
>>> not allowing libpurple etc. under current licensing (at least if Apple
>>> didn't change anything during the last year)..
>> I've seen this argument before and I don't think it holds water.
>>
>> At least to my knowledge, nothing in Apple's (current) agreements
>> prohibit developers from distributing source code, and as long as source
>> code (and possibly unsigned binaries) are distributed without further
>> restrictions, you can remain in compliance even if a third party chooses
>> to distribute signed copies.
>>
>> (In other words, I could digitally sign pidgin and run it in my
>> environment that requires my trusted digital signature on all
>> executables, if I wanted -- It wouldn't run in your similarly-configured
>> environment which requires your digital signature, but you'd be free to
>> build from source and sign it yourself or disable your OS's signature
>> verification so that you can run it yourself)
>>
>> As always, IANAL, and if you take legal advice from a mailing list,
>> you've got your money's worth and not a penny more.
>>
>> Either way, there are various AppStore entries that contain open source
>> products with various licenses, both BSD and GPL flavours.
>
> At least I'm remembering the issues VLC had maybe two years ago. Also
> unfortuantely the development rules are inside members area so I cannot
> check them.

I would argue that this isn't substantially different than software 
which is made available under multiple licenses; regardless of Apple's 
license, the spirit and letter of the GPL is honoured by the author 
making the source code available without further restrictions via normal 
channels...

Apple's agreement is, in my opinion, ultimately non-binding in this case 
since the user has additional rights from an alternate source. If the 
user distributes the files, they aren't doing so under Apple's license, 
they're able to do so under the GPL* license instead and therefore the 
user's GPL provided rights are preserved.

-- 
Dave Warren
http://www.hireahit.com/
http://ca.linkedin.com/in/davejwarren