解决苹果应用程序商店与GPL不兼容的问题

这里有一个供所有开源法律专家为社区研究和解决的想法。我今天看到苹果下架了VLC媒体播放器，因为GPL和苹果应用商店服务条款之间的冲突。的SJVN文章做了一个伟大的工作报告的问题之间的实际冲突GPL和苹果的服务条款之前的“不要问，不要说”行为引起了社会的关注，还有一个与App Store上的VLC软件无关的人向苹果提出了这个问题。我想可能有一个不同的解决方案。一个创建软件的人有能力在他们认为合适的情况下，以他们能够合理地创建的尽可能多的方式来授权它。很多人把这叫做“双重许可”后的开源世界MySQL AB用它作为自由软件许可软件社区在GPL下同时继续出售专有关闭单独许可下版软件的企业,希望更改软件和保护这些变化关闭。然而，对特定软件应用多个许可证的实践早于MySQL实践。Perl社区经常发布软件下的原始艺术许可证以及GPL，使该软件能够轻松地与其他GPL许可的软件组合。在其他方面，GPL和艺术许可的条款是不兼容的。(艺术授权2.0解决了这个问题)。微软以各种不同的专有方式向客户许可其软件，从企业协议和其他批量许可，到街角办公用品商店单个副本包装盒上的收缩包装EULA。这给那些坚信自由软件的开发者们提供了一条途径，他们也可以通过苹果应用商店将自己的软件展示给更多的用户。该项目可以为更广泛的用户使用GPL，并为可执行版本使用单独的Apple App Store发行许可，从而创建双重许可方案及其衍生物它在App Store上，进一步允许其他人在App Store上使用和发布二进制文件。项目获胜。它使用GPL作为与项目社区中的贡献者和提交者的契约来维护其软件自由的目标。项目社区之外的任何人都不能阻止GPL创建一个封闭的版本。该项目获得了苹果应用商店强大的分销渠道，以促进软件的使用，而不是其他渠道，它使用软件自由善良。项目外部的开发者和用户是赢家。他们仍然受益于GPL所保证的自由，允许他们检查、修改和发布他们认为合适的软件。如果他们想按照GPL从项目网站下载软件，更改软件并加载它，他们可以这样做。(苹果的SDK允许用户加载自己开发的应用程序。)如果他们想在苹果应用商店上发布他们修改后的衍生产品，他们也可以这么做，因为他们可以通过该项目的苹果应用商店发行许可来实现。 Apple doesn’t care. Apple cares if you take the binaries from the App Store and re-distribute those particular binaries elsewhere out of Apple’s control. Apple cares if you try to reverse engineer Apple’s DRM. They created their Terms of Service to prevent such practices. Apple certainly doesn't care if a developer gives there software away for free on the App Store, and I'm betting they have no opinion on whether or not the developer believes in software freedom. This legal tactic may not solve the VLC problem, because if I read SJVN’s article correctly, it was another group that produced the Apple App Store version of the software. The dual license tactic needs to come from the project itself. I also understand that this feels like a legal shuffle that shouldn’t be needed or seems contradictory. But the reality is that two organizations with separate goals in mind have created two licenses that are incompatible in language because of those unrelated goals. This is not a contradictory situation in intent, but rather in language. They clash because of the ease in the digital web-enabled world for things to come together in ways that the legal and business community didn’t foresee in the fast low-friction world of the Internet. What’s needed is a little legal linguistic grease to enable the two organizations and their orthogonal goals to slide by one another. Trying to get the two organizations to work together to solve the situation would require massive amounts of good will that is likely missing between the two. It would also require them to care about the others goals. It would likely create more friction when other voices and opinions and interests get involved. A second separate license using all the rules in place will likely solve free software needs a whole lot faster than complaining to Apple or demonizing them unjustly in this case. So how simple a distribution license can be created (and how quickly) for free software projects to use as they dual distribute through the Apple App Store? Are there any free software friendly lawyers that want to take a try at this for the good of all? Or is this completely impractical?