Will VLC be pulled from iOS App Store?

Andre Yoskowitz
1 Nov 2010 20:45

At the end of October, Applidium released an updated VLC for iOS, finally giving iPhone and iPod Touch owners a chance to use the popular media player on their devices.
The move followed Applidium's 1.0 version of the software which runs on the iPad.

Today, it has become clear that a possible licensing conflict may force the app offline.
PCWorld explains:

In addition to being free in the sense that it costs nothing, VLC is also open-source software developed collaboratively under the GNU Public License (GPL), which is designed to promote the creation of software that can be freely modified and redistributed by anyone, as long as they do so in compliance with the license.

In order to maintain the freedom of the software it protects, the GPL imposes several conditions under which redistribution may take place; in particular, the redistribution of the software must be unrestricted under any circumstance, allowing any user to give another user a functional copy under the same original terms.

Regular VLC contributor Rémi Denis-Courmont has said, however, that the iOS App Store violates the aforementioned terms because it uses proprietary DRM to make sure users do not redistribute apps obtained through the store. Denis-Courmont says he has now filed a copyright complaint with Apple, asking the software be removed from the store.

Apple has yet to respond but the software is still available and if you want it, chances are you should download it now.