Apple's Mac Developer Prorgam license agreement

Sean Egan seanegan at gmail.com
Thu Oct 28 22:07:38 EDT 2010


On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 6:42 PM, Evan Schoenberg, M.D. <evan at adium.im> wrote:
>> 3) Apple will be receiving a license to use 'libpurple' in promotional
>>   materials.  (p. 18) I'm not super happy about that, but neither am
>>   I torn up about it.  They will also of course be receiving a
>>   license to use 'Adium' in promotional materials, but I don't view
>>   that as something IMF Inc should have a particular position on.
>
> I understand the lack of enthusiasm.  If we went ahead with this and Adium were approved (2 big ifs), I can't envision Apple making use of the libpurple side of the license, in any case – they advertise to typical end users, and typical end users see 'Adium' and never delve as far as the About box or developers' pages to learn about 'libpurple'.

I actually disagree with Ethan on this point. Shouldn't anyone be able
to use 'libpurple,' 'Pidgin,' or 'Adium' in promotional materials that
refer to (non-forked) libpurple, Pidgin, or Adium?

>> 4) (potential show stopper) While Apple says that FOSS is acceptable
>>   and makes reasonable FOSS protections, the EULA addendum says that
>>   "The license granted to the end-user for th Licensed Application
>>   must be limited to a non-transferable license to use the Licensed
>>   Application on a Mac Product that the end user owns and
>>   controls[...]".  (p. 22) This is incompatible with the GPL.  I
>>   don't think Apple will allow a GPL product to be shipped via the
>>   App Store.
>
> I'm afraid you're correct. I hadn't noticed that language previously.  Let's see what the lawyers have to say before passing judgement.

Karen may look at it tomorrow, but probably not until next week. I
drew her attention to Schedule 1, and she acknowledges it may be a
problem, but we might be able to work something out.



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