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.

• 
  
• 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
  

Now the person wanting to download and play with your source-code can do so to their hearts content. If they want to run it, they can (free of any payment to Apple) do so in the simulator contained within the SDK that anyone can download from Apple's site.

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...