I’ve read CONTRIBUTING.md and unless I’ve missed a line by accident, there is no CLA for contributions, so with the first non-trivial 3rs party contribution the entire code base is AGPL with no way to relicense unless it’s negotiated with said contributor.
Based on the commit history, I get the feeling that all current authors are part of the Mammoth team (and they presumably have some kind of oral or written agreement that transfers the copyright of their work).
You’re right, of course; if they do accept contributions from external authors without some kind of legal document, they normally wouldn’t be allowed to put their app on the App Store.
I don’t think any of the contributors would mind (who would write iOS app code and then tell the project not to put their code on the App Store?) but I think this is just an oversight. Quite a common one in open source projects, to be honest. In practice, the license situation doesn’t really matter unless someone involves their lawyer, and I don’t think I’ve heard of a case where a developer demanded an App Store takedown for an AGPL iOS app.
The (A)GPL has no problems with the app store. It merely requires that users must be able to install altered versions and that’s certainly possible. It’s the app store policies by Apple that forbid GPL apps.
Missing a CLA seems like an oversight, releasing the public code under a license forbidden by Apple’s terms is most likely a deliberate choice to block competing app store submissions. They’d just use LGPLv2.1, Apache License 2, or so.
As I understand Apple’s terms, GPL code isn’t actually prohibited, as long as you’re not trying to make Apple’s additions fall under any open source licenses.
Their terms state:
3.3.22 If Your Application or Your Corresponding Product includes any FOSS, You agree to comply with all applicable FOSS licensing terms. You also agree not to use any FOSS in the development of Your Application or Your Corresponding Product in such a way that would cause the non-FOSS portions of the Apple Software to be subject to any FOSS licensing terms or obligations.
I don’t have an iDevice so I can’t see what the software license inside the app is stated to be, but as long as the app doesn’t claim to be AGPL-licensed in distributed form, I don’t think Apple’s terms are problematic.
The VLC people had to contact many authors to relicense libVLC to LGPLv2.1 because it would otherwise not be compliant to Apple’s terms. Surely the details are documented somewhere.
That’s because VLC took external contributions, and therefore couldn’t relicence the software by themselves.
All of the Github authors seem to be part of the official dev team, so the organisation behind the app shouldn’t run into any permission issues unless they’ve messed up their paperwork.
That’s because VLC took external contributions, and therefore couldn’t relicence the software by themselves.
“As I understand Apple’s terms, GPL code isn’t actually prohibited”
No relicensing would have been required if your understanding was correct. That said, I have a slight headache and that’s why I’m not looking it up myself.
Feel free to take a look around. We are not yet taking patches as we still have a little bit of tidying up to do. When we do, there will be a contributor license agreement.
I’ve read CONTRIBUTING.md and unless I’ve missed a line by accident, there is no CLA for contributions, so with the first non-trivial 3rs party contribution the entire code base is AGPL with no way to relicense unless it’s negotiated with said contributor.
Based on the commit history, I get the feeling that all current authors are part of the Mammoth team (and they presumably have some kind of oral or written agreement that transfers the copyright of their work).
You’re right, of course; if they do accept contributions from external authors without some kind of legal document, they normally wouldn’t be allowed to put their app on the App Store.
I don’t think any of the contributors would mind (who would write iOS app code and then tell the project not to put their code on the App Store?) but I think this is just an oversight. Quite a common one in open source projects, to be honest. In practice, the license situation doesn’t really matter unless someone involves their lawyer, and I don’t think I’ve heard of a case where a developer demanded an App Store takedown for an AGPL iOS app.
The (A)GPL has no problems with the app store. It merely requires that users must be able to install altered versions and that’s certainly possible. It’s the app store policies by Apple that forbid GPL apps.
Missing a CLA seems like an oversight, releasing the public code under a license forbidden by Apple’s terms is most likely a deliberate choice to block competing app store submissions. They’d just use LGPLv2.1, Apache License 2, or so.
As I understand Apple’s terms, GPL code isn’t actually prohibited, as long as you’re not trying to make Apple’s additions fall under any open source licenses.
Their terms state:
I don’t have an iDevice so I can’t see what the software license inside the app is stated to be, but as long as the app doesn’t claim to be AGPL-licensed in distributed form, I don’t think Apple’s terms are problematic.
The VLC people had to contact many authors to relicense libVLC to LGPLv2.1 because it would otherwise not be compliant to Apple’s terms. Surely the details are documented somewhere.
That’s because VLC took external contributions, and therefore couldn’t relicence the software by themselves.
All of the Github authors seem to be part of the official dev team, so the organisation behind the app shouldn’t run into any permission issues unless they’ve messed up their paperwork.
“As I understand Apple’s terms, GPL code isn’t actually prohibited”
No relicensing would have been required if your understanding was correct. That said, I have a slight headache and that’s why I’m not looking it up myself.
From the README:
So yeah, looks like there will be a CLA.
So hostile, asymmetric licensing…