Is it legal to publish iOS apps under the GNU GPLv

Question

Is it legal to publish iOS apps under the GNU General Public License (GPL) v3 open-source license? Obviously, you can't use other people's GPL source, but is it okay if I hold the copyright to the entire source?

If the GPL license is not okay — may I use the MIT license, or the BSD license, or another license?

Answer 1

Even though I Am Not A Lawyer, from my take on the GPL, IMO, the GPLv3 is absolutely incompatible with App Store distribution solely because of paragraph 3, I quote:

3. Protecting Users' Legal Rights From Anti-Circumvention Law.

No covered work shall be deemed part of an effective technological measure under any applicable law fulfilling obligations under article 11 of the WIPO copyright treaty adopted on 20 December 1996, or similar laws prohibiting or restricting circumvention of such measures.

When you convey a covered work, you waive any legal power to forbid circumvention of technological measures to the extent such circumvention is effected by exercising rights under this License with respect to the covered work, and you disclaim any intention to limit operation or modification of the work as a means of enforcing, against the work's users, your or third parties' legal rights to forbid circumvention of technological measures.

Basically, AFAIK, that means the device must be completely open for anyone to install and use their modifications of your source code on the device.

This paragraph does not, however, exist in the GPLv2. Which is the license I've choosen for Gorillas because for as far as I can tell, it is compatible. I'm sure that should someone decide it isn't and take it to court anything could happen, but technically; the GPL has never even seen court (at least, not as far as I know). If Apple decides, one day, to explicitly mention the GPL as incompatible because THEY cannot abide to its terms of distribution, then they might tell us not to license it as such and I'll be switching over to CDDL or so.

As for the other licenses you mention; those are perfectly OK. They have nowhere near as heavy restrictions as the GPL does.

FYI, here's a fairly nice comparison of some licenses:

Copyrights, Licenses and CDDL Illustrated

By the way, you can also take any of these great licenses (including the GPLv3) and adapt it to make it compatible (provided they are not copyrighted) or use them for dual-licensing.

Answer 2

If you own the copyright on all of the code, then there should be no problem. You can license it to OTHER people under the GPL, but it wouldn't apply to you, or to anybody else that you chose to license it to under other terms.

Answer 3

Short answer, from my understanding, yes and no

In a bit more detail, there's nothing stopping you from writing an iPhone app and publishing the source under GPL. However, certain parts of the license seem impossible to fulfill under the app store distribution mechanism

The real-world result is situations like Colloquy mobile, which you must pay for on the app store, but can get the source for free of charge (and could build/install onto your iPhone/iTouch if you're signed up for the $99 dev program)