iPhone App In App Store Limbo Open Sourced 432
recoiledsnake writes "The author of iPhone prototyping tool Briefs has decided to open source it after the App store submission has been in limbo for over three months. The app had got into trouble for what Apple believes is being able to run interpreted code, though the author denies it, saying all the compiling happens on the Mac. While Rob stays civil, his co-worker blasts Apple for not even rejecting the app. Three months is nothing compared to Google Voice for the iPhone though, which is still being studied further by Apple after more than a year."
Read the license (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know if this technically qualifies as open source, and it's not Free Software, because of this line in the license:
"The Software and/or source code cannot be copied in whole and
sold without meaningful modification for a profit. "
Three months is nothing. (Score:3, Informative)
Welcome to the mobile software industry, where your target platform doesn't care about you because there are 600,000 other developers who'll bend over and take it if you won't.
Re:his product (Score:3, Informative)
As you say, the app allows one to create wireframe prototypes, but those prototypes are not usable in any sense. So it isn't the same situation as Adobe allowing Flash to be compiled into apps.
The reason the app was rejected initially was for allowing the "execution" of code that could be loaded from outside the app. However, the "code" was nothing but an XML document that was read into the app and used to construct interfaces. In fact, the XML document even used Apple's "property list" format, and was simply loaded directly into an NSDictionary.
The insane part of this whole thing is that had the developer not given his "code" files a unique extension (he used .briefslist I believe), and had changed the wording in his instructions just slightly, the app probably would have gotten through fine. Others have noted that there are live apps that do essential the same thing that Briefs wanted to do.
To be clear: The code is visible, but not FOSS (Score:5, Informative)
The Briefs code is now up on GitHub, and yes, you can go look at it, however it's not "Open Source" (per OSI), it's not "Free Software" (per the FSF), and it's not "DFSG-free" (per Debian).
If you look at the commit history [github.com] for the license, he even explicitly changed the license two days ago to make it less free:
2010-08-28
Modified license terms to disallow someone from reselling Briefs without making major modifications. Also protect the Briefs trademark. Still, free source code, huh? Not too shabby.
Prior to two days ago, the code was under the... well, I'm not exactly sure what license!
Here's the license (the first paragraph is a dead ringer for the opening of the MIT License [opensource.org]):
Copyright (c) 2009-2010, Rob Rhyne
Briefs is a trademark of Digital Arch Design Corp.
http://robrhyne.com/ [robrhyne.com]
http://digitalarch.net/ [digitalarch.net]
All rights reserved.
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without
restriction except as noted below, including without limitation
the rights to use,copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute,
and/or sublicense, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
Here's the non-FOSS part:
The Software and/or source code cannot be copied in whole and
sold without meaningful modification for a profit.
This is more of the MIT license:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
This middle part looks like the BSD license [opensource.org]:
Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in
the documentation and/or other materials provided with
the distribution.
Actually, there are only two clauses there, so that's essentially the 2-clause BSD, not the 3-clause one (just a minor point, really).
Then we get the YELLING-AT-YOU indemnification clause. Lawyers seem to love these things, but they seem so uncouth to me. Anyhow, for 5 points, from which license was this paragraph chosen?
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES
OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT
HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR
OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
That's right! It's the indemnification clause from the MIT license.
I googled around trying to figure out if other people used this same license, but the best I came up with was the NCSA license [opensource.org]. It's unlikely that this license is based off that one, as the phrase to deal in the Software (MIT) is used in this new license instead of to deal with the Software (NCSA).
One more thing: let's point out exactly why the license doesn't pass any of the most popular FOSS metrics:
1) "Open Source" (per OSI)
Per
Re:Why really does Apple behave this way? (Score:3, Informative)
They behave the way they do because they are control freaks. They want absolute control over their platform. Their ultimate vision is that they'll be the source of all your media, all your apps, etc. They'll dictate how you consume stuff. Such a setup would be, needless to say, very profitable.
As for why they can get away with it, well I'd say there are two reasons:
1) Fanboyism/zealotry. Apple has had a following for a long time of people for whom they can do no wrong more or less. A non-trivial amount of these people are in the press (Macs are big in prepress work). They just love Apple and everything they do. So when something bad comes out, they find ways to rationalize it away, or ignore it.
2) For many of the Apple buyers these days, Apple is not a technology company but a fashion company. They largely won't admit it, but they buy them as fashion accessories. They are the "cool" product to own. As such they are purchased based on that alone. Whatever restrictions/costs accompany that are ok because they want to be cool. I see the same thing these days with fixed gear bikes. They are in with college kids (I work on campus and bike to work). They buy brand new, surprisingly expensive, fixed gear bikes. This, of course, makes them harder to ride up hill, but they are ok with that because fixed gear is cool, road or mountain bikes are not.
or 3) Their market share is sufficiently low to face antitrust investigations for monopolistic behavior.
Re:Why really does Apple behave this way? (Score:3, Informative)
No, actually, this particular issue is one standing in the way of corporate adoption, not geek adoption. Corporate types don't want to have to hire Objective C developers - who are rare and expensive - to develop their iPhone apps. Apple, however, won't allow any other language to be implemented (other than Safari's javascript interpreter).
The language restriction applies only for App Store distribution. Software distributed internally doesn't need to go through Apple's approval process and can be written in any language.
Re:To be clear: The code is visible, but not FOSS (Score:3, Informative)
Here's the previous licence [github.com]
Re:Why really does Apple behave this way? (Score:4, Informative)
I believe Nintendo and Playstation require any software coded to be certified by them, and of course they also have licensing and developer fees.
The only real difference is that Microsoft owns Windows which happens to be a preferred developer environment for all these consoles.
Re:Why really does Apple behave this way? (Score:4, Informative)
i never said the issue was with interpreted code. apple never said anything... let alone this being about interpreted code.... the REAL question is why are YOU talking about interpreted code?
From headline
The app had got into trouble for what Apple believes is being able to run interpreted code
From article
No interpreted code may be downloaded or used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Documented APIs and built-in interpreter(s).
Re:Why really does Apple behave this way? (Score:5, Informative)
You're joking.
USB was introduced in 1995. It was present - STANDARD - on every machine and motherboard a year later when I was comparing prices. The iMac G3 wasn't released until 1998.
Yes, there were other ports on those machines. There were other ports on the iMac G3 as well, a pair of firewire ports that went to... uhm... a few crappy, barely-even-apple-compatible cameras, and maybe a few specially designed keyboards that worked better with a standard MIDI interface anyways.
To claim that a shitty little closed-box unit with a hockey-puck mouse, crappy OS (System 8... gah that makes me want to puke just thinking about it) and that barely could hold 1% of the computer market somehow "created the market for USB peripherals" is just fucking stupid.
Re:Why really does Apple behave this way? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why really does Apple behave this way? (Score:4, Informative)
Submitter here. I included that line in the summary because of the information from a previous blog entry at http://blog.robrhyne.com/post/659211315/almost-on-the-app-store [robrhyne.com]
Last week, after initially submitting on May 7th, I received a phone call from Apple to update me on the status of my submission.
The gentleman on the phone was courteous and polite, but his message was blunt. While I had not been officially rejected (at least, not yet), he asked me some questions and hoped to manage my expectations. Based on the information available to him, the reviewers believed Briefs contained a non-Apple interpreter and the first team initially rejected it for non-compliance with section 3.3.2 of the iPhone Developer Agreement. I’m still waiting to hear their final decision.
Re:Why really does Apple behave this way? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why really does Apple behave this way? (Score:2, Informative)
I don't really see many areas where Apple started a standard. If it's a standard, then everyone implements it usually. Most of what Apple does is bullshit lock-in and cables that cost 10x as much as they should.
Re:Why really does Apple behave this way? (Score:2, Informative)