Linked List: July 24, 2008

Thursday, 24 July 2008

Aristotle Pagaltzis on why I was wrong about the GPL and the iPhone SDK:

Sorry, John. I can clearly write GPL software for the iPhone — but not free software. And if I do that, Apple can’t give it to you — not on the App Store’s current terms and conditions. They impose restrictions on the recipient of the software that the GPL forbids third parties from placing upon the recipient on pain of losing the right to distribute the software. Apple is in violation of the software’s licence for distributing these GPL applications through the App Store in the first place.

Interesting conclusion. I think the counter-argument is that the GPL (as well as any other software license) applies to third-parties, not to the developers of the apps themselves. And when developers grant Apple permission to distribute their apps through the App Store, they’re explicitly granting Apple permission to distribute them under Apple’s licensing terms, not the GPL.

Update: And the counter-counter-argument to that — as pointed out by numerous thoughtful readers — is that the above would only apply if the developer in question were the sole author of the entire app. If the app makes use of GPL’d frameworks or libraries written by others, the developer would not have the right to grant Apple permission to distribute the app under the App Store terms. And then there’s the whole GPL3 vs. GPL2 thing.

iPhone OS and SDK 2.1 Betas ★

New 2.1 beta releases of both the iPhone OS and iPhone SDK — registered developers only, of course. The 2.1 tools can’t be used to produce apps for the current App Store, though — and a device updated to the 2.1 beta OS supposedly can’t go back to the production 2.0 OS release. What a pain.

Dan Frakes Reviews Nine iPhone To-Do Apps ★

There are a slew of basic to-do/task/checklist apps in the App Store already, and Dan Frakes looked at all of them. If you’re interested in this sort of app, this is the best comparison written yet.

Kodak Zi6 Pocket Video Camera ★

Kodak’s upcoming Zi6 pocket video camera looks like a possible Flip killer. Similar size and shape, but a bit more expensive at $180. But the Zi6 shoots in HD at up to 60 frames per second, it accepts SD cards for storage, and, in a huge win for Mac users, records directly to H.264 format. (The Flip only shoots VGA at 30 fps, and uses a video codec that doesn’t work in iMovie.) The Zi6 also offers a macro focusing mode — Flip’s cameras can’t focus anything closer than about three feet.

I also love that Kodak is starting to get its mojo back in the post-film world.

(Via Andy Ihnatko, to whom Kodak is sending a review unit.)

Jon Hicks’s Design Iterations for the Silverback Mascot ★

Worth a re-link from back in March.

Yahoo Music Shutting Down, DRM Keys Will Stop Working ★

Greg Sandoval:

Yahoo is shutting off support for Yahoo Music after September 30, which means starting October 1, if users want to move music to new hard drives or computers, they will be out of luck.

Walt Mossberg on MobileMe ★

Walt Mossberg:

Unfortunately, after a week of intense testing of the service, I can’t recommend it, at least not in its current state. It’s a great idea, but, as of now, MobileMe has too many flaws to keep its promises.

I am not referring to the launch glitches that plagued MobileMe earlier this month, such as servers that couldn’t keep up with the traffic and email outages that, for some users, persist as I write this. Those were bad, but they have eased considerably. Apple already has apologized for them and is giving customers an extra 30 days on their subscriptions to make up for the poor start. The problems I am citing are systemic.

My biggest complaint about the MobileMe web apps is that after logging in, everything goes over HTTP, not HTTPS. Google offers HTTPS for free, but MobileMe costs $100 a year.

CS193P ★

Jeff Smykil on the what the hell is going on? status of the iPhone SDK non-disclosure agreement. So far as anyone can tell, the NDA is still in effect, even though the SDK is out of beta and the App Store is open. But Stanford is offering an iPhone Application Programming course to computer science students this fall.

Silverback 1.0 ★

New $50 usability testing application from Clearleft. Interesting. This seems incredibly useful, and I’m not aware of anything else like it.

BoxOffice ★

Another GPL app for the iPhone? That’s unpossible.

Aurora Feint Game De-Listed From App Store ★

The game was uploading unencrypted versions of your entire address book to their servers, ostensibly for “community features”.

New iPhone 3G TV Ads ★

Speaking of The New Yorker, it’s the featured web site in one of Apple’s new iPhone 3G spots.

Google Launches Knol ★

Google’s previously announced Wikipedia competitor is now open. (But, of course, it’s labeled “beta”. Gmail is four years old and has tens of millions of users and is still in “beta”. What a fucking crock.)

Anyway, here’s an interesting bit regarding Knol:

We are happy to announce an agreement with the New Yorker magazine which allows any author to add one cartoon per knol from the New Yorker’s extensive cartoon repository. Cartoons are an effective (and fun) way to make your point, even on the most serious topics.

The Balcony Is Closed ★

Roger Ebert on the end of his long-running (33 years!) TV show. Here, on when he and Gene Siskel realized they’d hit it big:

The day we fully realized it in our guts, I think, was the first time we were invited to appear with Johnny Carson. We were scared out of our minds. We’d been briefed on likely questions by one of the show’s writers, but moments before airtime he popped his head into the dressing room and said, “Johnny may ask you for some of your favorite movies this year.”

Gene and I stared at each other in horror. “What was one of your favorite movies this year?” he asked me. “Gone With the Wind,” I said. The Doc Severinson orchestra had started playing the famous “Tonight Show” theme. Neither one of us could think of a single movie. Gene called our office in Chicago. “Tell me some movies we liked this year,” he said. This is a true story.

WordPress for iPhone Source Code Released ★

There must be some mistake here, because the Free Software Foundation told me last week that you couldn’t write GPL software for the iPhone.