Comment on Apple App Store vs FSF by James

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Thanks for your comment. You don’t agree with me, but I believe in your right to disagree with me.

To your first point, the app in question was free. Apple can’t pilfer anything from an app that has no cost. There is no revenue to pilfer. In fact it was costing Apple money to host and provide bandwidth for downloads.

To you second point, I write a lot of open source code. I put it out there for anyone to use, under any circumstance, for any endeavor. I don’t view any usage of my code by anyone to be predatory. There are no exceptions or exclusions. That is true freedom.

I’m sure my next comment won’t be popular. I happen to think, in this case, part of the problem lies with Robota who uploaded GNU Go to the app store. The terms and conditions of the app store were pre-existing. You can’t expect Apple to change the terms just because someone uploaded an app whose license prevents it from being distributed by the app store. If that were the case, here is a get-quick-rich scheme – create an app, give it a ‘whoever distributes this owes me a $1m bucks’ license, upload it to the app store, then ask Apple for your million dollars. Both cases are equally unrealistic.

I support your right to believe in ‘Free Software’. But I hold that those beliefs are too far removed from the beliefs, mechanics, and operations of the mainstream market to be accepted any time soon. Unfortunate, I wish it wasn’t so.



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