Comment by dlcarrier
4 days ago
So if your service is proprietary, but your client is open source, it looks like your're free to go.
As someone that relies on third-party clients to get usable interfaces, if this gets widely adopted it would be great news. It would end the cat-and-mouse game from companies trying to force users onto first-party clients.
But only if the user is not getting the app through an app store but from a "code repository"? I'm not sure if I interpret that correctly, but at first glance it seems confusing and ambiguous.
Does that mean I need to download the Android apk from a git repository? Would a clever lawyer be able to argue that the release section on GitHub is outside the repository and therefore not fulfilling this clause?
Would F-Droid still not be exempt because it is structured like a store and offers pre-built binaries?
Most proprietary services would process user data.
It's also naive to believe that a fraction of open source in a companies pipeline would give them a free pass for everything.
But the text says "or," not "and." So by my interpretation if you process user data but are available via "free, public" repo, you're not covered. I presume "free" is defined elsewhere in the text, and that it approximates "open-source."
>(3) THIS ARTICLE 30 DOES NOT APPLY TO:
(e) AN OPERATING SYSTEM PROVIDER OR DEVELOPER THAT DISTRIBUTES AN OPERATING SYSTEM OR APPLICATION UNDER LICENSE TERMS THAT PERMIT A RECIPIENT TO COPY, REDISTRIBUTE, AND MODIFY THE SOFTWARE WITHOUT ANY PLATFORM-IMPOSED TECHNICAL OR CONTRACTUAL RESTRICTIONS IMPOSED BY THE PROVIDER OR DEVELOPER ON INSTALLING ALL MODIFIED VERSIONS.
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