Ugh. I hope you non-jailbroken users downloaded VLC for iPhone while you had the chance, because the app has been removed from the App Store. Strangely enough, this move did not come from Apple or even from the VLC team, but from one Rémi Denis-Courmont (who is a major contributor to VLC — as far […]
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VLC pulled from the iPhone App Store

Jan 8th 2011 by

taken from the VLC blog

Ugh. I hope you non-jailbroken users downloaded VLC for iPhone while you had the chance, because the app has been removed from the App Store. Strangely enough, this move did not come from Apple or even from the VLC team, but from one Rémi Denis-Courmont (who is a major contributor to VLC — as far as I understand it). Courmont’s quarrel was with the fact that any iOS app distributed through the App Store has Apple’s DRM attached to it and, as such, is at odds with the GNU General Public License that VLC is distributed under.

The move is probably technically and legally sound, but I think it blindly follows the letter of the law and goes against the spirit of free software licensing in the first place. The VLC app was being distributed for free on the App Store, and although iOS devices are a little limiting in terms of installing and sharing apps, I really doubt that installing the VLC iPhone app was much more difficult than installing the free, open-source version. People who know VLC on computers know to visit the website, whereas iOS users knew to try download through the App Store (and most every iOS user has or has access to an iTunes account – especially since you can make one without a credit card).

It seems to me there are a lot of end-user losers here and only one very smug winner.

[via TUAW via ObamaPacMan]

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