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Open Source and the iOS App Store

64 points| liyanchang | 12 years ago |blog.inkmobility.com | reply

40 comments

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[+] leokun|12 years ago|reply
Open Source applications in iOS are nice for developers to help them build better applications, but given iOS is such a closed locked system, it is meaningless for users. A part of the open source idea is that users can know and have some control over the software that runs on the hardware that belongs to them. As long as iOS remains a locked proprietary walled garden owned by Apple and carriers, open source on iOS is meaningless to them. Maybe we've all just given up on that idea though.
[+] aaronbrethorst|12 years ago|reply 

    A part of the open source idea is that users
    can know and have some control over the
    software that runs on the hardware that
    belongs to them.
You mean the GNU/FSF/Copyleft idea, not open source. There is a meaningfully large amount of code behind iOS and OS X that is available under licenses that meet the Open Source Definition.

Also, check out some of the apps in the App Store today that use open source components: https://www.cocoacontrols.com/apps

(note: my website, http://www.cocoacontrols.com, is mentioned in the OP's blog post)

[+] doe88|12 years ago|reply
I beg to differ, I think that if you are knowledgeable enough to know what open source is, what it means and how it works, then you're able to download xcode, build the open source app, bypass the apple store and install it on your device.
[+] engrenage|12 years ago|reply
"Closed, locked, walled garden, proprietary, owned by carriers (false - android is restricted by carriers, not iOS)", etc.

And yet strangely, I use open source libraries on iOS all the time.

Open source is completely and utterly irrelevant to end-users. It is only meaningful if you are able to work with the source code.

The only thing stopping you from doing that is not wanting to pay the $100 developer registration.

[+] rimantas|12 years ago|reply 

  > but given iOS is such a closed locked system, it is
  > meaningless for users
As if it is any different for non-programmers on any systems, open or not.
[+] lukifer|12 years ago|reply
The obstacle to open source adoption has always been economics, not usability. (Give them paychecks, and the usability engineers will come.) While it's possible to have a successful business model with FOSS, it's typically much more difficult or less lucrative compared to the product/appliance model, and too often completely unviable to make a living.

The curious paradox of Apple's walled garden is that it creates an opening to put every line of code on GitHub, yet be confident that the vast majority of customers will still click "Buy Now" rather than downloading elsewhere for free. It may not include Freedom Zero, and so is far from ideologically pure, but the ecosystem still gains the benefits of transparency, trust, and iterative improvement from open source.

Outside of certain niches, the market is clearly not gravitating towards FOSS on its own; if the politics of computing is important to us as a culture, it probably needs to move forward in the form of consumer protection laws and antitrust litigation. But in the meantime, FOSS would do well to use the App Store and make the best of a bad situation.

[+] uams|12 years ago|reply
This is a really interesting idea. iOS and submitting to the app store has always seemed high friction task. This takes reduces both of them by having a fully baked app that I can just modify.

The promise of shipping code to the app store is a bit more tenuous as we have to bank on the developers packaging it up and sending it up to the app store.

[+] liyanchang|12 years ago|reply
Thanks for the support. To your concern, yes. But we're also looking at how we can give not only commit rights to github but also deploy rights on the app store for frequent committers.
[+] lucian1900|12 years ago|reply
The missing example for platforms with lots of open source apps is Android.

No platform should artificially restrict development and the freedom of running any app. iOS deserves its lack of open source apps, in a way.

[+] engrenage|12 years ago|reply
No platform should artificially restrict development and the freedom of any app (regardless of how destructive, malicious, misleading, or harmful to the end user or any other party, it might be).

End users must be prohibited from choosing a platform which does not obey this rule.

[+] jeena|12 years ago|reply
It was 4 years ago when I developed a iOS ImagePicker in my free time which I knew I would use in a app at work, just to be able to open source it. And it was the right move, seems like many people liked and used it: https://github.com/jeena/JPImagePickerController even got a couple of job offers because of it (back then there weren't that many iOS developers in Sweden)
[+] seivan|12 years ago|reply
I spent some time moving UIKit over to blocks without resorting to swizzling or using external dependencies like libffi. Needed to get that off my desk and ship smaller things.

This looks nice!

[+] atlex2|12 years ago|reply
This is a great step-- I note that you chose to open source after your were on the store. As a well-known company, was that to prevent pre-release copycats?