[Foundation-l] iPhone App

[Brion Vibber]

Judson Dunn wrote:
> I haven't seen anything that would imply that Apple wouldn't let you
> distribute open source apps through iTunes. I doubt they would provide
> access to the source code themselves of course, but nothing is
> stopping people from distributing binaries that way, and having the
> source code available on their website.
> 
> Here's a crazy what if. What if we make it open source, but charge
> something small for it, like $1-$5, and have that donated to the
> foundation, or to Mediawiki development? I don't think this would play
> very badly at all on the web PR-wise, if it was cheap enough, people
> would feel good about paying.

If we do go ahead and make an official Wikipedia app for the iPhone/iPod 
Touch, we would of course release it for free. People know where they 
can make donations. :)


I haven't gone over the developer agreements in detail yet, but I don't 
_think_ there'd be any problem with us keeping the source of our app open...

...but because of the lockdown on the device's operating system, anybody 
wanting to customize the code would be unable to actually load their 
version onto a device without either themselves shelling out $99 to 
Apple for a developer key or hacking it.


The rumor is this situation is better than that of many other mobile 
devices, and it's certainly better than that of common gaming platforms, 
but it feels unusually restrictive compared to the general-purpose 
computers we're used to.

-- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)