The Free Software Foundation, whose spokesperson Richard Stallman is known for his avid distaste for all things corporate has decided to launch an attack against Apple. In this case, much of his ire is directed towards the iPhone, which he says violates the GPL.

General Public License

Richard Stallman

The major force behind the GPL is the idea of copyleft. Copyleft is a means of using the copyright law to grant rights instead of taking them away. Software that is protected under the GPL is allowed to be redistributed by any party at will, so long as that party keeps the software under the GPL license and releases the source code to the public.

Failure to abide by these conditions leaves the violator open to suit by the copyleft holder. In short, breaking the GPL in any fashion voids your rights to use and distribute the software. Doing so is equivalent to violating any other copyright law and you can be taken to court. Which leads as back to the case of Mr. Stallman and Apple.

iPhone

Stallman contends that some of the software in the iPhone (along with several other Apple devices) was licensed under the GPL and thus must either be removed, come into compliance or be paid for. The payment would be 100% of the retail price of each unit sold.

Obviously, what FSF is trying to do is force Apple into either licensing a large chunk of its software under GPL or pay some ludicrous sum of money. Both options have to seem pretty unlikely even to FSF.

Web 2.0 Roundup

I am a huge fan of FOSS, open standards, and the entire culture surrounding open source. However, I don’t believe that the FSF as much ground to stand on in this case. Even if Apple has misused software that has been licensed under the GPL, the chances of successfully converting them to a free and open company are next to nil.

What this move does do is give Apple cause to adjust the way that they choose their software in the future. If it is true that they used improperly licensed products in the iPhone, that is a problem that needs to be addressed. Just because the GPL does not seem as stringently enforced as other types of copyright agreements does not mean it should be ignored as having no force of law.

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