Having said that, the recent VLC debacle shows that there is a vigorous (if irrational) anti-App Store sentiment in the GPL crowd, which even caught up FSF's Richard Stallman, who thought that VLC's rejection from the App Store was somehow tantamount to 'enforcing the GPL against Apple', an assertion whose basis I fail to understand. I'm not a lawyer, but I don't see anything in the GPL that prohibits App Store distribution. They really should, but because they are both.

It only prohibits (Section 3) the use of GPL'd code as part of DRM enforcement. The only reason apps like Chrome and Firefox are not on the Mac App Store is that they havent submitted them. I don't see any requirement that require that object code must be conveyable.Īlso, the GPLv3 does not prohibit distribution of object code under DRM. (There are other provisions that basically require the same thing: access to source code). access to copy the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge provided that you also convey the machine-readable Corresponding Source under the terms of this License, in one of these ways: You may convey a covered work in object code form. The GPL only requires that you provide access to source code.

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