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Apple

iOS App Store's First Game Boy Emulator Taken Down Just Days Later (arstechnica.com) 21

Posted by msmash from the took-less-than-a-week dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Over the weekend, developer Mattia La Spina launched iGBA as one of the first retro game emulators legitimately available on the iOS App Store following Apple's rules change regarding such emulators earlier this month. As of Monday morning, though, iGBA has been pulled from the App Store following controversy over the unauthorized reuse of source code from a different emulator project.

iOS 8.1 plugs security hole that made it easy to install emulators Shortly after iGBA's launch, some people on social media began noticing that the project appeared to be based on the code for GBA4iOS, a nearly decade-old emulator that developer Riley Testut and a partner developed as high-schoolers (and distributed via a temporary security hole in the iOS App store). Testut took to social media Sunday morning to call iGBA a "knock-off" of GBA4iOS. "I did not give anyone permission to do this, yet it's now sitting at the top of the charts (despite being filled with ads + tracking)," he wrote.

GBA4iOS is an open source program released under the GNU GPLv2 license, with licensing terms that let anyone "use, modify, and distribute my original code for this project without fear of legal consequences." But those expansive licensing terms only apply "unless you plan to submit your app to Apple's App Store, in which case written permission from me is explicitly required."
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iOS App Store's First Game Boy Emulator Taken Down Just Days Later More

iOS App Store's First Game Boy Emulator Taken Down Just Days Later

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  • Can't have it both ways (Score:4, Insightful)

    by omnichad ( 1198475 ) on Monday April 15, 2024 @11:44AM (#64395628) Homepage

    released under the GNU GPLv2 license, with licensing terms that let anyone "use, modify, and distribute my original code for this project without fear of legal consequences." But those expansive licensing terms only apply "unless you plan to submit your app to Apple's App Store, in which case written permission from me is explicitly required."

    Can't be both. If it's released under GPLv2 for any purpose, it can be re-released by anyone else under GPLv2 without those silly restrictions.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Guspaz ( 556486 )

      To be specific, the GPLv2 clause 6:

      Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.

      And the "license" section of the GBA4iOS readme file (a copy of GPLv2 is not included with the source):

      The GBA4iOS codebase is distributed under the GNU GPLv2 license. That being said, I explicitly give permission for anyone to use, modify, and distribute my original code for this project without fear of legal consequences — unless you plan to submit your app to Apple’s App Store, in which case written permission from me is explicitly required. Dependencies remain under their original licenses.

      If the code is licensed under the GPLv2, then that grants us permission to use/modify/distribute his code, and thus his supplemental permissions (and restrictions on granting that supplemental permission) is not required. I interpret this as an offer of an alternative license, not additional restrictions placed on top of the GPLv2, which is good, since GPLv2 forbids it. E

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dmomo ( 256005 )

      Why wouldn't someone be allowed to use one license as a template and modify the terms?

      As long as there are no contradictions, and conflicts in language are resolved, this is legal. In fact, version THREE of the GPL explicitly allows it. In version two, it's less formal, but still applies. That being said, in this case it probably won't hold up. And, this is speculation, but I would bet that the developer didn't choose language that would guarantee no conflicts.

      • It wouldn't really work, though. You could take it for personal use under GPLv2, then fork it and post your version to the Apple store. Or have a proxy person download and fork it. They didn't actually post terms anywhere. What they actually say is it's "distributed under the GNU GPLv2 license." and then explicitly verbally grant further permissions with the exception of the app store. Which means they didn't modify the GPLv2.

        Regardless, they use other GPL code in their project. So the whole project m

        • Oh and that GPL code is the entirety of EmuEx Plus Alpha emulator. All they've done is put some GUI and input support on top and leave out most of the emulation backends.

          And that's GPLv3 code. I'm not even sure they can do that.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by EvilSS ( 557649 )

        Why wouldn't someone be allowed to use one license as a template and modify the terms?

        You could, but then it wouldn't be GPLv2, it would be something else. Which, again, is perfectly fine. But that's not what he did here. He declared it GPLv2, then came back and tried to add a modifier onto that after the fact (reports are the modifier about the app store restriction was added at a later date). In addition there is the complication that his project incorporates an emulator that is not his and licensed as GPLv3, so this project is not 100% his work. In his later project, Delta, he's tried to

    • Can't be both. If it's released under GPLv2 for any purpose, it can be re-released by anyone else under GPLv2 without those silly restrictions.

      GPLv2 licensed code is not allowed in the Apple App Store to begin with, so while that may be true, it doesn’t matter here.

      GPLv2 contains a right to “make a copy for your neighbor” that is fundamentally incompatible with any app stores that employ DRM (hence why VLC was removed from the App Store over a decade ago). As such, the only part of his license that would still be relevant is the part where he says:

      That being said, I explicitly give permission for anyone to use, modify, and distribute my original code for this project without fear of legal consequences — unless you plan to submit your app to Apple’s App Store, in which case written permission from me is explicitly required.

      Suffice to say, whether under the GPLv2 or the developer’s more expansive ter

  • The version in the app store was loaded up with as many obnoxious ads as possible. Did they actually release full source for the ad-laden version? Was it even possible to meet the license requirements of the GPL with the adware SDKs simulatneously?

    • I don't even think the original version complies with the GPL. This "emulator" is just a GUI and input wrapper around an existing GPLv3 emulator [github.com]. Pretty sure you can't release the finished product under GPLv2 and especially not by adding random terms about "oh and no app store"

  • What part of the GPL says you need his permission to upload to an app store?

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