[vlc-devel] FSF position on GPLv2 & current App Store terms

[Rafaël Carré]

On Wed, 3 Nov 2010 05:59:06 +0100
Pierre Ynard <linkfanel at yahoo.fr> wrote:

> On a personal note, I believe that the AppStore terms and conditions
> are clearly against the spirit of the GPL. There should be no
> questions about whether the GPL is a valid EULA, no references to
> never-ending additional rules and licenses, no limitations on the
> number of copies which may be moot or not... Apple is simply not
> trying hard enough to comply with free software licenses, and yet has
> no concern with accepting them in the AppStore, despite their tight
> control on acceptance over other issues. So I totally condone one's
> action against that, and I wonder why this mailing list sounds like
> "how can we interpret the GPL so that we can have VLC on iPhone?" so
> more often than like "what should we do to get Apple to respect our
> free software?"

I share your opinion,

We should be proud of writing a top-quality software.

Just remember how incredibly popular VLC is:

http://www.apple.com/euro/itunes/charts/apps/top10appstorefree.html
VLC is in the top10 of every listed country (except Japan??) and the
most downloaded program in US (which I assume is the biggest market).

http://sourceforge.net/top/toplist.php?type=downloads_week
VLC is the top downloaded program, more than twice as popular as the
next software.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
More than 170 million downloads and counting


VLC is not good software, it's the best, period.

Our duty is to continue develop the best multimedia player of the
world, not go through boring legal texts to find our way to each
software platform.


Apple should be blessing us (including Romain Goyet, also known as
Applidium, and all the people listed in
http://git.videolan.org/?p=vlc.git;a=blob;f=AUTHORS, not to mention
the people who wrote all the 3rd party code we rely on) for making VLC
available to their customers.


And if something goes into the way of making VLC available on their
products, they should work on removing those obstacles.


If they ignore us and refuse to do that then so be it, I'll just laugh
at them and continue to use and develop the best software out there. 



I understand that the FSF in its political agenda wants to use the fact
that VLC, as the best software out there, is Free Software.

But IMO they are not talking with the right party.
Brett Smith' blog post seems to be directed at Free Software community
while they should communicate with the Apple products users who are
likely to be the best suited persons for pressing Apple to change its
terms.

-- 
Rafaël Carré