Selling Krita through Apple AppStore

[Jaroslaw Staniek]

On 9 December 2011 02:24, Alex Sarmiento <alexsarmiento at me.com> wrote:
> As far as i know, Apple never said that they pulled out the VLC App from the
> AppStore because the GPL license was incompatible, nobody knows why was
> pulled out .  Just because some idiotic Nokia employee doesn't like Apple
> doesn't means that you can't publish GPL software in the AppStore

Please note, this attitude is not welcome here. I provided you link to facts.
Calling people that actually co-develop software (Nokia contributes to
Calligra a lot) idiots tells something about yourself. And yet it's
the software that you intend to use and/or deploy.
So please reconsider how you treat people. To achieve the goal one
needs to figure out 'what it takes to put an App in the AppStore'
first.

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_App_Store
>
> says
>
> "Software licensed only under the GPL (because the App Store Terms of
> Service impose additional restrictions incompatible with the GPL)[8][9]"
>
> but if  you pay attention to those references [8] and [9]
> http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl-enforcement
> http://adium.im/pipermail/devel_adium.im/2011-January/007973.html
>
> You will notice that those are just personal opinions and obscure references
> without any legal ground.

You have not provided any evidence that all the isses have 'no legal ground'.
This suggests that the *GPL licenses have no meaning and application
for you and instead you look at the licensing in a really liberal way.
Even if only ONE issue is valid, distribution is not legal and *GPL
says it's up to any author to request removal. In the example of VLC
it was the author who used this very freedom. If anyone should be
accused of doing any harm it's not the author using his own freedoms.

I give you one example: forcing non-commercial use for the software
clearly breaks the license:

http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/us/terms.html


"MAC APP STORE PRODUCT USAGE RULES

Except as otherwise set forth herein,

(i) If you are an individual acting in your personal capacity, you may
download and use an application from the Mac App Store (“Mac App Store
Product”) for personal, non-commercial use on any Apple-branded
products running Mac OS X (“Mac Computer”) that you own or control. "

Generally, most of this list make me as published of a *GPL-derived
product _breaking_ the license.

> There's another very popular GPL  app in the AppStore
> http://mplayerx.org/
> And I am sure that there is more GPL software.

Is this your 'legal ground' for you really this time?

> Please notice that  the  Apple Store is just another distribution channel
> for the end user.  You can always share a link to the  the source code. You
> can even pack a tarbal with the source codel inside the  Bundle (why not?).

The tarball will be then provided for non-commercial use...

PS: What is surprising and interesting that the new MS App Store would
be far more open, since they prepared specific exception for open
source products.
It is not anybody fault out there that Apple haven't done the same
when it is clearly possible.

-- 
regards / pozdrawiam, Jaroslaw Staniek
 http://www.linkedin.com/in/jstaniek
 Kexi & Calligra (kexi-project.org, identi.ca/kexi, calligra-suite.org)
 KDE Software Development Platform on MS Windows (windows.kde.org)