[mythtv-users] THIS IS A NON-COMMERCIAL MAILING LIST

[Simon Hobson]

Mark Lord wrote:

>An intelligent human would also realize that the iOS app that was
>being discussed is "commercial" only in that the author is trying
>to recover some of his costs by charging a tiny pittance for it.
>
>That's hardly "commercial" to an "intelligent human."
>It's more "non profit" than "commercial".
>
>The potential benefits to mythtv-users from the app far outweigh
>any possibility that he might recover half his direct costs,
>let alone any fraction of his time costs.

That's how it came across to me.

And just to be clear, the unfortunate reality of dealing with the 
legacy of "Saint Jobs" (as some people (not me) seem to think of him) 
is :
1) The program could not be released under GPL if he wanted to, GPL 
is fundamentally incompatible with the closed crippleware used on 
iphone OS stuff. The alternative would be to release it via Cydia (or 
similar) which then severely restricts your user base.
2) It costs real cash to be able to do this. Not a lot, and yes I 
realise that other developers have to buy their machines etc, but 
here there is an explicit cash expenditure to a third party before 
they'll allow your application in the store (even if you give it away 
free). If I remember the costs correctly, he'll need to sell 30 to 40 
copies before he'll have covered that cost.


-- 
Simon Hobson

Visit http://www.magpiesnestpublishing.co.uk/ for books by acclaimed
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