Late Friday, Apple finally pulled the VLC app after receiving a complaint two months earlier from a single developer involved in the creation of the original open-source VLC code over breach of the GNU Public License -- but the app is available again, at least to jailbreakers, via Cydia.
You may recall the dust that kicked up a couple months ago when lone developer Rémi Denis-Courmont started a crusade to get Apple to remove the free VLC app from the App Store. As detailed by TUAW, a company called Applidium took the open-source VLC code and ported it to iOS to the cheers of many iPad, iPhone and iPod touch users everywhere.
The problem with the free app is that VLC is licensed under the GNU Public License (specifically, version two) -- which specifically frowns on using code on closed platforms, particularly ones such as the App Store which are draped in digital rights management. That led Denis-Courmont, who’s a full-time employee of Apple rival Nokia, to take his grievance to Cupertino, who has finally removed the popular app.
“At last, Apple has removed VLC media player from its application store,” Denis-Courmont wrote on his blog Friday. “Thus the incompatibility between the GNU General Public License and the AppStore terms of use is resolved -- the hard way. 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.”
As noted by 9to5Mac, Denis-Courmont lightened up his tone a bit with a revision to the blog post over the weekend and even posted further details, claiming that the removal likely had nothing to do with his one-man crusade, otherwise Apple would have responded two months ago.
Unfortunately, the people being hurt in the end are iOS device owners who could have enjoyed the freedom that VLC offers. The app is unlikely to return, since Apple can’t pick and choose which apps receive DRM and which don’t, and they don’t appear to be changing their closed approach anytime soon. It’s a shame, but hopefully everyone who wanted VLC for iOS had ample time to grab it before now.
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ilikeimac
January 10, 2011 at 4:16pm
It's not much of a pity. VLC for the desktop rocks. VLC for iOS was virtually useless to me. Last I checked it could only play files sync'd to it via the clunky iTunes interface, so stuff stored in the cloud (Dropbox) or streamed or downloaded from a website was still inaccessible. And since my movie collection has no hope of fitting on an iPad, I'm perfectly content with streaming video to the iPad via Plex or StreamToMe.
