Why mobile platforms need to embrace Free Software

Last month, representatives of the Free Software Foundation sat down with Apple to discuss how software licensed under the Gnu GPL (General Public License) could be appropriately distributed via Apple’s iPhone App Store. The talks didn’t go well. In a nutshell, it’s no go: The App Store is completely incompatible with the GPL and Free Software. That’s bad news for developers, customers, and the mobile software market at large.

The software in question was Gnu Go, a Free Software implementation of the ancient Chinese board game. Go itself is centuries old, and as such, game play is not subject to any patents or trademarks. There’s really no reason why Gnu Go couldn’t be distributed to anyone who wanted to play — except, of course, that Apple wants complete control over how software is distributed on the App Store and to iPhones in general.

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The App Store license agreement stipulates a number of restrictions on what customers can do with software downloaded from the store. For example, customers are only allowed to store copies of apps on five devices at one time. That flies in the face of the GPL, which grants customers unlimited freedom to redistribute the software as they see fit.

In addition, the GPL stipulates that no one who distributes GPL-licensed software may offer it under a different license or change the terms of the license arbitrarily. That right rests solely with the author of the software. Therefore, by adding more restrictions other than those specified by the GPL, the App Store license agreement violates the GPL when it is applied to GPL-licensed software.

To its credit, Apple wasted no time in acknowledging the problem. Unfortunately, its solution was to remove Gnu Go from the App Store and to ban any future GPL-licensed apps. And given Apple’s penchant for intractability when it comes to the App Store, further discussion seems unlikely.

What are smartphone vendors afraid of?
Free Software has made important inroads into the smartphone market. At least three modern smartphone operating systems — Google’s Android, Palm’s WebOS, and Nokia’s Maemo (now being reworked with Intel as MeeGo) — are based on the Linux kernel. But while the kernel itself is GPL-licensed, in each of these cases the majority of the platform is licensed under different, more business-friendly terms, using a variety of alternate open source licenses.

This is important because of the distinction between Free Software and the open source movement. Open source’s primary tenet is merely openness: having access to source code and being allowed to tinker with the software and to help fix bugs. The Free Software movement, on the other hand, values freedom foremost. Among other things, the GPL specifies that software developers and users have the same basic rights to install, use, modify, and distribute software in whatever way they choose, provided they agree to grant those same rights to everyone else — and that means everyone.

This perhaps naïve-sounding idea is worrisome to commercial entities, which tend to be covetous about their investments in intellectual property. But while commercial developers may shy away from the GPL, it has yielded some incredible, groundbreaking software. In addition to the Linux kernel, the GCC compiler technology, the Emacs code editor, the Gnome desktop environment, and the MySQL database are all available licensed under the GPL, among many other packages.

This level of innovation could also be possible on smartphone platforms. Consider how rapidly mobile platforms and devices are maturing compared to the relative stasis in the PC market. Consider the emerging markets for location-based services, electronic publishing, mobile e-commerce, and more. A freer, more open developer ecosystem can only contribute to the exciting growth in the mobile software sector — if, that is, smartphone vendors could let go of their old-fashioned, self-serving license requirements.

Could similar growth and innovation be achieved through more permissive open source licenses, such as the BSD license, or even through proprietary software practices? Perhaps. And the GPL will always be contentious. But the troubling thing is that no matter what your opinion of the GPL, in the markets for PC, laptop, and server software, it’s at least an option. On the iPhone App Store, you’re not even allowed to try it — and the same may be true of other vendors’ stores as well.

The vice grip tightens
Worse, this seems to be part of a growing trend away from openness on the part of smartphone makers and the mobile networks that serve them. While the debate over Net neutrality for terrestrial Internet connections still rages, AT&T, the exclusive U.S. carrier of the iPhone, recently announced that it would no longer offer unlimited data service to customers with smartphones. Verizon Wireless is expected to follow suit soon.

This is especially troubling when you consider that smartphones may be the first computing devices specifically designed for network access. In the early days of the home computing market, relatively few PCs had any kind of communications capabilities. (Raise your hand if you owned a 300-baud modem!) Mainframes and big Unix servers offered access over networks, but they were the very definition of cathedral-style computing, complete with a gray-bearded “priesthood” to act as gatekeepers. On the other hand, accessing a network is a mobile phone’s raison d’être. For smartphone users, the Internet is personal, portable, and always on.

The opportunities inherent in such devices are tremendous. How strange that we seem to have fallen back to modes of thinking borrowed from the 1970s, when the companies that produced computing devices got to dictate how, where, when, and for how long we could use them.

To be fair, not every vendor has taken the same hostile stance toward free and open mobile computing that Apple and AT&T have. Sprint and T-Mobile have yet to announce any limits to their data plans. Google’s Android Market isn’t the exclusive source of applications for Android phones. And Palm has even volunteered to waive its $99 fee for developers whose apps will be open source.

These are all encouraging moves. But until we see a smartphone market where GPL-licensed software enjoys the same status as commercial software, Free Software will be losing the battle for this important segment of the computing industry. Developers often begrudge the GPL for seeming to emphasize principles over commercial practicalities. But if you want to see what a software market looks like when it neglects principles, look no further than the iPhone App Store. Developers should demand more.

This article, “Why mobile platforms need to embrace Free Software,” originally appeared at InfoWorld.com.