The iphone and open-source (take 2)
25/07/08 07:38 |
Software
I'm really
getting tired of this...
Over at Aristotle Pagaltzis' blog he takes John Gruber to task for not understanding the GPL. Unfortunately it's Aristotle who has his argument confused.
As mentioned before all you have to do is distribute the source code. I've looked in the developer agreement, and there's nothing about what you have to do with the source code - it's all to do with the "Application" (a defined technical term that does not include the source code). A simple analogy to bread and flour ought to be sufficient to show that the source code is separate from the application itself...
So, here's what you do to fully and freely distribute open-source code.
If they want to run it on the phone itself, they'll need to pay (once) $99 to Apple to obtain the right-to-licence certificate-generation option. Now they can generate an ad-hoc certificate (as I mentioned in the previous post) and load the program they've just downloaded onto their own phone.
So, to go over the freedoms that this gives you, in Aristotle's own terms:
... looks as though John Gruber understands freedom better than Aristotle does...
Over at Aristotle Pagaltzis' blog he takes John Gruber to task for not understanding the GPL. Unfortunately it's Aristotle who has his argument confused.
As mentioned before all you have to do is distribute the source code. I've looked in the developer agreement, and there's nothing about what you have to do with the source code - it's all to do with the "Application" (a defined technical term that does not include the source code). A simple analogy to bread and flour ought to be sufficient to show that the source code is separate from the application itself...
So, here's what you do to fully and freely distribute open-source code.
- Set up
a website or get a project on one of the many
project-hosting sites
- Place a
tarball of your source code on that site and link
to it so people can download it
- That's
it
If they want to run it on the phone itself, they'll need to pay (once) $99 to Apple to obtain the right-to-licence certificate-generation option. Now they can generate an ad-hoc certificate (as I mentioned in the previous post) and load the program they've just downloaded onto their own phone.
So, to go over the freedoms that this gives you, in Aristotle's own terms:
- The
freedom to run the program for any purpose (freedom
0) check
- The
freedom to study how the program works, and adapt
it to your own needs (freedom 1) check
- The
freedom to redistribute copies to help your
neighbour (freedom 2) check
- The
freedom to improve the program, and release your
improvements to the public, so that the whole
community benefits (freedom 3) check
... looks as though John Gruber understands freedom better than Aristotle does...