Briefly: Apple shareholder proposal, VLC app removed, Intel tablets - Page 2

I'm not an Apple shareholder... but if I was the idea of Jobs stepping down would make my heart skip a couple of beats.

I wonder if the plan set out by the board of directors in the event of something happening to Jobs is just to go all Weekend at Bernie's on his ass...?

It would probably have less of an effect on the share price than admitting there was a problem!

You must have something wrong with your Mac because I've been using VLC since back in the day and I use it heavily watching 720p blu-ray movies on my slow 2007 Macbook. And everyone I know who has a Mac and TB HDs of blu-ray movies in mkv format uses it as well without a single crash.

The problem here is not Apple, The problem is the GPL, which is incompatible with pretty much any other license, open source or not.

I posted in another thread yesterday about this in regard to Adium/Pidgin, with the example that Pidgin doesn't work with OpenSSL because libpurple's GPL license is incompatible with OpenSSL's BSD-like license. Two open source products but developers are not free to use them together. So, if open source supposedly equals freedom, how can this be?

It's because, far from leading to freedom, the GPL actually limits freedom and choice: there's freedom only so long as everyone does what they are told and all software is licensed under the GPL's restrictive terms, and freedom only within the limits of the GPL.


EDIT: The succession plan demand is totally stupid. I think the group asking for this needs to find someone more intelligent to manage their money. Never a good idea to have idiots doing that for you.

They kind of already did that once. Good reference !

After Apple took over the funding of LLVM and before it brought forth Clang, libc++ and much more, the creator of LLVM came to GCC to offer his project to improve GCC. This was also the time that GCC was still GPLv2.

Several turf war arguments later and issues with licensing, not to mention RedHat being complete control freaks over GCC resulted in the end of the road for Apple and GCC.

http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2005-11/msg00888.html

Even before this Apple was having issues with the direction of GPLv3.

So was Linus Torvalds and his Linux Project.

His official view of FSF and the GPL regarding Linux was a big talk to the hand to Stallman.

READ IT. It's priceless.

http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/9/25/161

This is precisely the reason why, although I used to be a huge fan of open source software and still like it to a great degree, I am also becoming extremely angry at open source developers for being extremely selfish and idealistic rather than making their software more useful and available.

Another good example is the ZFS filesystem on Linux and h.264 support in Firefox.

To be perfectly honest, a lot of open source developers need to GET THE HELL OVER THEMSELVES.

So, in the end, whose the successor?

RE: VLC

Open Source geeks get a little too worked up. So what if there is DRM attached to a FREE application! If you want the application, go onto iTunes and click "purchase" which seems like a weird word for something that is free.

I can give a lot of arguments why the Apple approach is good for the average person. The average geek will give me a ton of reasons why it is closed and prohibitive. I say spend a little more time with the average user that does stupid things... the closed approach is not all bad.

This licensing argument was just plain dumb. Purists

There is also Perian, which if you have it installed will eliminate the need for VLC except in some extreme cases. Perian also hooks into QuickTime so it's transparent and you don't have to worry about which player to use. I'm sure there are many other alternatives that I don't know about also.

Like many folks, I downloaded the iOS version the minute it came out in case it disappeared like it has today but in all honesty I only used it once. It serves almost no purpose on iOS and even though I have it, I wouldn't be bothered if I didn't.

People don't generally email each other DivX files and need to open them on their iPhone, iPad, etc., and given all the convoluted ways to get media onto an iOS device it's actually just as easy to import it into iTunes first and then it's converted anyway.

He can look like someone glued a dog's ass to his head, but it doesn't make him wrong about the conflict issue.

And as he said, no one should be shocked about the pull. He talked it up enough that every blog was reporting it, given this of us that really really care enough time to grab the app



Not sure why. Jobs 'stepped down' for close to six months not so long ago and the company didn't crumble. You almost couldn't tell he was missing what with the stock price going up, product lowing out etc. All those critics saying without Jobs Apple would be dead in six months aypte their words and declared that Cook et al did a great job

What folks need to remember is that Jobs handpicked a lot if not all of his executives. They have been raised in the ways of JobsThink with daily doses of the KoolAid. And tech is not an overnight thing. Jobs started working on the whole iPhone/iPad ten years ago. He's probably had other things going that long as well. And right is starting things we won't hear rumors about for another five years.

So even if he drops dead this second, the company knows where he was taking it and knows the answer to WWSD and things will go just fine. Even if they don't spell it all out because some shareholding group wants to feel like they have some control etc

Awesome. Now go take that Introduction to UI Design down at the local community college, and pass the info along to your open-source friends.

For having a lot of wherewithal and gumption, it amazes me how smart, dedicated open-source developers can't for the life of them figure out when something looks like shit. The VLC Mac app looks like Godzilla screwed a stapler. Guys, I'll pay $1 to have something that looks a little better than a pile of leaves.

This comment is really out of line. What does his appearance have to do with anything?

Perian suits most of my playback needs, but I also use Movist. I like how it remembers the last position a video stopped, though I wish it would save this data long term. Movist is basically a nice looking version of VLC without all the crashiness.

http://www.macstories.net/reviews/movist/

Good news re: VLC. Hopefully it won't be allowed back until it actually works.

What didn't work about it for you?

Don't want to step on any toes here, but in many cases with everything.

I'd like to read them first.

Rémi Denis-Courmont is a jackass, and a coward, where's the comments section on his blog? Up an orifice of his probably. What a gutsy move from the Nokia employee... And that quote, "I have no pity for...", oh please Rémi show the developers and users some pity... as if there aren't tens of video playing apps for ios costing peanuts.... jackass.

That will be one nice day when it happens.

He works for Nokia if that tell you anything. He makes a living working against Nokia. His hobby is apparently to sabotage any VLC projects on Apple products. What a douchebag.. and an ugly one too... see post above for his mugshot.

So .. you are arguing that a persons race, gender and general appearance is the most important aspect to consider when talking about their actions or beliefs?

Whether the person is white, black ugly or beautiful has nothing to do with this at all. I don't know why the admins here (who are really fast with the banning usually and for very slight offences), are letting mister bunnyturd and a few others spend their time insulting this guy.

Why not focus on what he *did* and leave his personal appearance etc. out of it, instead of getting all bigoted on his ass for no reason?

I'm not the only one here who has noticed VLC's unreliability. Furthermore it's been buggy not just my 2008 Unibody Macbook, but on a titanium Powerbook G4, a G3 iBook, Windows XP and Mythbuntu 10.04. Whilst there's the probability of my being very unlucky with all these diverse systems over the past five years, a problem with VLC is a more rational deduction.

There's also the possibility of the media files being the issue.

I second Prof. Peabody’s comment.

In actual tests, clang and company are not much faster than the GCC. Besides, both are standards that all can use, not just apple.

Where did you read that nonsense? BSD's license is totally compatible with GPL regardless of version. Nothing prevents Pidgin from using openssl due to the GPL.

Edit: Just read said nonsense at their web site: Ridiculous. They can't be bothered to include one sentence.

Yes, yes, I read this:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html

But that's just being anal. FSF states this clearly "However, there is no reason not to use programs that have been released under the original BSD license."

"See my point?"

Yes.

In any case...

The GPL prevents people like apple from becoming freeloaders. They tried to be lazy with webkit and thankfully they made sure they did their duty and released their improvements back to the community.

The troll is strong with this one.


Exactly when did Apple try to be lazy with WebKit and why werent they successful in their laziness? love to see some proof of this.

The performance, debugging robustness and much more will just continue to grow LLVM/Clang as time goes on.

GCC for OS X is terminal at 4.2 for GPLv3 reasons. You can MacPorts in gcc-current and not work with much of Cocoa all you want, or you can just use LLVM/Clang and be about your merry way.

C++Ox status is moving steadily along for C++ lovers, as well:

http://clang.llvm.org/cxx_status.html

For myself, I can use LLVM/Clang/libc++ with libstdc++ on Linux or OS X and not panic about the GPLv3.

Never mind that WebKit is a rewrite of any work by KDE and from it's inception was designed to work with both commercial and free projects w/o coercive licensing.

Webkit is perfectly fine; it's the original work they did with KHTML. It wasn't the end of the world, but they weren't exactly forthcoming with their patches either.

http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/1001

Webkit can't be licensed under anything but the GPL, *correction, LGPL*. It doesn't prevent Safari from being non-GPL either, but it does stop them from just taking it and not giving back to the KDE developers

This whole GPL stuff posted here is just a bunch of FUD.

I see all the fanbots are out trying to defend Apple's lack of of a succession plan disclosure. How sad that Apple is only the sum of one man.

Webkit is LGPL and BSD, not GPL. If it were GPL then Safari couldn't be proprietary and Webkit would have about a 0.5% market share.

OpenSSL is not licensed under BSD but dual licensed under Apache 1.0 and SSLeay license. The Apache 1.0 has an advertising clause and is incompatible with the GPL without an explicit exception.

The rabid FSF folks are the worst kind of freeloaders with RMS demanding folks call Linux GNU/Linux. Especially given that open source code sharing with GPL projects is almost completely one way into GPL and not back out to the rest of the OSS community. The nice thing is that permissive license users don't really care about "freeloading". They just like it when their code is useful.

The best kind of freetards are the kind that don't even understand GPL but flame others anyway.

Who needs a "App Store" to get VLC anyway? And VLC works great on my 2006 matte iMac.

Wrong again. The article is referring to the mobile version of VLC. The Mac version is not and never has been available on the Mac AppStore since the Mac store has only been open for a couple of days now. VLC has been removed from the iOS AppStore. You are mistaken.

Jeez, reading comprehension please! This report is referring to the iOS AppStore, NOT the OS X AppStore. VLC is not and never has been on the OS X AppStore.

This is a piece of GPL software.

Therefore, unless the MobileVLC team added their own serarate supplemnetary support agreement (which I strongly doubt), your agreement with the developer goes something along these lines: The program is provided "... “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION."

Even in light of the app being pulled from the App Store, the developers will have absolutely no difficulty whatsoever in continuing to honour their end of that agreement.

If, however, as the license states, you wish to continue supporting yourself, just ask the MobileVLC developers for access to the source code (it is your right to make this request, since the software is GPL after all). Then purchase a membership in the iOS developer's program, and use your own copy of XCode to make the necessray modifications and install it on your own iDevice.

Aside: I suspect it should be fairly easy for this software to enjoy a second incarnation as a piece of software that is distributed to specifically target either:
1) Jailbroken iOS devices, which do not have the DRM restriction, or

2) The iOS simulator (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), which also does not have any DRM restriction and hence cannot fall afoul of the GPL's restrictions.

(Coincidentally, option 2 could also be installed on any real iOS device if the owner happens to have a membership in the iOS developer's program. This second step could be accomplished with minimal modification, but without involving any redistribution, and therefore would not bring up any of the GPL's requirements regarding DRM because that only applies for redistribution.)

Well why would anyone ever bother in the first place with VLC on an iOs device? Sounds like way too much trouble to begin with- just accept the fact that Apple only wants you to buy from iTunes in the first place or simply switch to a Droid.

Apple was actually perfectly happy to host VLC -- Apple only removed it after a dissenter from within the VLC camp objected to other members of the VLC development team making use of his contributed code, contrary to the terms under which he had released it, without obtaining his permission.

It still prevents them from free loading, LGPL or not.


Which is exactly the same reason for the BSD issue. No difference.


You are making no sense, as GNU/LINUX is the right name to call it. It's the GNU software + Linux kernel, neither of each would be anywhere without the other. Linux happens to be GPL v2. because Linus doesn't care about the whole GPL 3 clause about patents and is more pragmatic (ie a compromiser).

Why are you saying it is one way? With just about every project depending on another (like Handbrake on FFMPEG and x264, work done by VLC), you need to clairfy.



Looks like you fall into that category.

The licensing discrepancy was apparently brought to Apple's attention by VLC developer Rémi Denis-Courmon.

"At last, Apple has removed VLC media player from its application store. Thus the incompatibility between the GNU General Public License and the AppStore terms of use is resolved - the hard way," Denis-Courmon is reported as saying in a blog post. "I am not going to pity the owners of iDevices, and not even the MobileVLC developers who doubtless wasted a lot of their time. This end should not have come to a surprise to anyone."



Considering it was Denis-Courmo that made the stink about it, they call that cutting off your nose to spite your face.

He f*cked a lot of people out of a great app.