[vlc-devel] Apple AppStore infringing VLC media player license

[Rafaël Carré]

On Tue, 26 Oct 2010 09:49:05 +0200
Rémi Denis-Courmont <rem at videolan.org> wrote:

> Some people have commented that this will damage the project's
> reputation. Maybe so. Blame those who published and/or advertized VLC
> for iPad. The fact of the GPL incompatibility was already well known.
> JB himself described it as a "grey area". They decided to take the
> risk anyway, and they bear full responsibility for any consequences.
> Personally, I don't blame them because I know very well how a geek
> feels when writing cool code for a cool new gadget.

Also I want to say that should Apple stop to distribute VLC (we can
still hope that they change their conditions to something GPL
friendly), VLC for iPhone/iPad could still be distributed through Cydia.

(So the work of pdherbemont/Ecco/others was not done for nothing)

I don't know how the Cydia repository handles GPL projects wrt source
code distribution but at least the freedom to tinker with the code,
rebuild and run it is not affected.

> But it seems that people are now accounting ME responsible for this,
> evidently including the people who censored me as of today. This is

Reading the logs, it seems xtophe shut planet down to avoid much drama:
00:27 < xtophe> shall now 404 or timeout
But yes i think a mail should have be sent to the ML

> entirely intolerable. I am not the one who took the risks of violating
> copyright here.

I agree Apple is not being nice to free software with platform
lock-down but I think you should have worded your message differently
and *demanded* GPL-compatible distribution terms.

Your message can be read as a troll too easily since you seem to expect
only VLC removal from AppStore (i also expect this but utopia doesn't
harm).

Bolding your request of GPL compatibility would also have raised
awareness about FLOSS by clueless iProduct users who are (well, were)
reading this message on planet.videolan.org


Last note I honestly didn't know planet.videolan.org was that much
popular, and it's sad that it's gone. Please put it back

-- 
Rafaël Carré