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

[Romain Goyet]

Rémi,

You're being way too harsh on JB. And, more importantly, I really
don't get your point.

Isn't his job to actually promote VLC  ?

And thing is, VLC on the iOS is _the_ big VLC thing these days. People
are curious about it. That's a very good opportunity to get people
excited about VLC, and in a more general way to get people to
talk/blog/tweet about VLC. Indeed, two times this past month VLC ended
up being a trending topic on Twitter. That's some very good PR, and if
JB hadn't tweeted about this then that would have been a missed
opportunity.

Also, VLC on the iOS has been downloaded 2 million times in under a
week : it's about half as much as all the other platforms, including
the windows version. There's no way a community manager can ignore
this and not communicate on the topic !

To summarize, my point is simple : if JB hadn't been talking about
this, he simply wouldn't have done his job.

Now I understand you guys raised an issue with the GPLv2. To be really
honest with you guys, we had absolutely no idea of the possibility of
a license incompatibility. As far as I'm concerned, I really hate
legalese. (if it were up to me, I would have put MobileVLC's code
under BSD or public domain). I genuinely thought that as far as we 1/
Opened all source code and 2/ Licensed it under GPL as well, we were
ok. Turns out maybe not.
So given we thought we were doing things "right", I really don't see
why there shouldn't have been any communication on the iOS port...

 - Romain

2010/11/3 Rémi Denis-Courmont <remi at remlab.net>:
>
> On Tue, 2 Nov 2010 17:17:16 +0100, Jean-Baptiste Kempf <jb at videolan.org>
> wrote:
>> I am answering to him, because I don't think he can come here and comment
>> without making apologies. And I am still waiting for those apologies.
>
> Reading the thread, you're the one owing apologies for gross misbehavior,
> not him.
>
>>> > With those attitudes, do not wonder why people are moving away from
>>> > Open Source development and from the GPL licences...
>>> > https://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?measure=loc_changed
>>>
>>> Sorry but that is totally gratuitous and off-topic.
>>
>> True, but not this part:
>>> > If I understand correctly, the FSF new policy is to blow up
>>> > communities?
>
> That is gratuitous as well. I don't see any community being split up, let
> alone deliberately by the FSF. I only see flaming, which is bad, but far
> less severe. And if someone has tried to alienate part of the community, it
> is _you_:
> http://twitter.com/videolan/status/29189418336
>
>>> You decided to provide plenty of PR for MobileVLC, even though you
>>> stated that this was a "gray area". You decided to take the risks
>>> anyway. I have already stated that I can understand why you did so.
>>> But please don't blame other people for what ultimately was
>>> consequence of your own actions.
>
>> Clearly not, we push on twitter many things, that are more or less
>> around VLC, being it VLC remotes and what not.
>
> There is an expression for statement of this kind: blatant lie.
>
> http://twitter.com/mashable/status/28689451409
> http://twitter.com/01net/status/28697601912
> http://twitter.com/engadget/status/28688986073
> (all of the above "retweeted" by you)
> http://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/www-doc/2010-September/005269.html
>
>> Moreover, Gray Area does not mean forbidden, AFAIK.
>
> Gray area means on your own (responsibility), not green light.
>
>> And? A journalist or a so-called activist needs to verify their sources.
>> Which they didn't.
>
> Probably. But that is hypocritical. You promoted libvpx while it was still
> clearly incompatible, and MobileVLC which still is incompatible.
>
> I am really disappointed by your persistence.
>
> --
> Rémi Denis-Courmont
> http://www.remlab.net
> http://fi.linkedin.com/in/remidenis
>
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