| That article is full of it. It essentially wants to agitate a lynch mob against the messenger, implying a conspiracy by Rémi and his current employer, without a clue about FSF's role in the incident, while disregarding any responsibility of Apple to provide its paying customers access to the software they want, by the terms they can get it. The copyright infringement notice is not targeted to the group that created the iOS version of VLC, and their project is not being shut down. There is nothing that prevents those people developing that application and distributing it via any channel they choose, as far as that distribution channel complies with terms of GPL. Why is it so hard to see that it is Apple which prevents having such distribution channels? I am amazed how these people assume all the liability, support and freedom from the FOSS developers, who work without compensation, while happily accepting all the restrictions from their vendor, who they pay dearly. How is it that I see talk about "how much I hate GPL" and "how GPL is bad for businesses/community/users/whatsoever", when an alternative of having these pieces of software distributed with GPL license is to not have them at all? The author of the software chose the license for a purpose. Without the license, choosing of which the creator has no obligations from the users whatsoever, the users will not have the software at their disposal at all. Instead of groups of whiny self-entitled users and lynch mobs, we need people who are willing to work against restrictions imposed by businesses, and users who see themselves as members of a community and not just as consumers of others' free work. That said, I think non-copyleft licenses like BSD are just fine. But at the end, it is the authors' privilege to choose whichever license they find suitable. |