Bitcoin Forum

Greetings everyone

In the past we have seen the Apple App Store deny applications base on whatever Apple decides - As a developer this always caused me concern that my efforts to develop an app will be squashed by Apple for no reason.  That being said, does anyone think there will be any issues trying to get bitcoin related apps published on the App Store?

Cheers!

Not completely true. Your software will be subject to the restrictions of the App Store but nothing is preventing from you licensing it as public domain and free for modification to the highest extent possible.

Sure, it doesn't meet the anal restrictions of the GPLs and GNU but let's be practical. Software can be just as free without them.

Well, the licenses aren't very free then, eh? Haha.

Hm, as far as I'm concerned, all the MIT license requires is some reference of the said license, which should be possible for the iOS platform. Correct me if I am wrong.

Not in the eyes of Richard Stallman. Only GNU forces you to be free.

Not too surprising, they're about as closed of a company as you get.
I suppose that's a problem with developing an iphone app and getting people to trust it.

Why would it be against the license if you offered to give away the source code?  Just because the binary is in the app store and the source is in a different spot it should be ok.

If it's all YOUR code and YOUR copyright, you can distribute it any way you want. If you're using others' code, the story is different.

I was somewhat surprised when I did a search of the iTunes App Store and didn't get a single hit for 'bitcoin'.

Please continue with your project and write something and release it.  It doesn't necessarily have to be a full Bitcoin wallet implementation.

There should be "an App for that" and there isn't yet.

I'd be perfectly happy with not having an iPhone app at all. The license issue is just one of many reasons to not develop for iOS.

My understanding is that you can put open source software in the app store. However, apples policies are such that I would not want to risk developing for iOS. While the license may not be an issue, they might well find a different reason to deny entry.

Yes.  Understood.  Why I don't get (and I know there is a reason) is why many open source licenses are a problem with the Apple app store.  What is the specific licensing issue?

The code isn't modifiable to the end user. It's just BS due to the 'forced freedom' aspect of many licenses.

What about the possibility of releasing an app on Cydia for jailbroken iOS users?  Cydia is essentially just a frontend for APT, so it's got very much to do with open-source and license issues and such.  You can also charge for the app, though sadly only payments through PayPal and Amazon are currently supported.

It would be amazing if you could somehow pay for a Bitcoin app with Bitcoins, hehe.

There are plenty of open source iOS and OS X App Store apps.

http://maniacdev.com/2010/06/35-open-source-iphone-app-store-apps-updated-with-10-new-apps/

True the GPL is incompatible with Apple's policies, but that has no bearing on Bitcoin, which has an MIT style license.