VLC's days in the iTunes App Store may be numbered

Rémi Denis-Courmont, one of the primary developers of open-source media player VLC (Videolan Client), has announced that Videolan has sent Apple a formal notification of copyright infringement regarding the terms under which its iOS app is being distributed in the iTunes App Store.

The root of the issue is this: VLC is distributed under the GPL, while VLC's iOS app is distributed by Apple under their iTunes Terms and Conditions, which limit users to installing both free and paid apps on a maximum of 5 devices. This limitation is enforced through DRM and is basically in direct conflict with the terms of VLC's GPL license. This conflict must have been known to Videolan prior to the app's arrival in the App Store, but they claim they are not at fault since the app was ported to iOS by a third party developer.

A precedent exists for this situation, and it's not pretty for fans of VLC on iOS. Earlier this year, the same thing happened with Gnu Go, a chess game distributed under the GPL. Back then, Apple chose to remove the app from the App Store rather than change their Terms and Conditions to make them compatible with apps that are under a GPL license.

So it definitely looks like VLC for iOS will disappear from the App Store any day now. If you haven't yet, perhaps you should go grab a copy while it's still available.

[via Macstories]