Re: Creating an iPhone distribution

Ian Silvester <[email protected]> wrote:

> Okay, a little progress.
> 
> The iOS SDK is a free (as in beer) download; it is available via the
> same route as Xcode (the software required to obtain gcc for OS X). This
> means that there is no licensing obstruction to an iPhone Privoxy distro.

Assuming "iOS SDK" contains proprietary "scripts used to control
compilation and installation", I'm not sure I follow.

Quoting GPLv2 §3:
| For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code
| for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition
| files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation
| of the executable. 
| However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need
| not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source
| or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so
| on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless
| that component itself accompanies the executable. 
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html

Why isn't that an obstruction for distributing Privoxy binaries for iOS?

> There remain a couple of challenges however:
> 
> 1. So far I've only talked to one software repository (hereafter
> 'repo'), and one limitation they impose is that the installer cannot run
> any post-installation script. This means that upgrades would overwrite
> config files. This is not ideal, but may turn out to be commonplace
> amongst other repos. Their opinion is that the software itself should
> write out default config files on instantiation, which is perhaps not
> unreasonable.

In case of Privoxy's FreeBSD port, the rc script does a config file
check before starting Privoxy. If a required file does not exists,
the default file gets copied:

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/ports/www/privoxy/files/privoxy.in?rev=1.7;content-type=text%2Fx-cvsweb-markup;only_with_tag=HEAD

Couldn't you use a similar approach?

While the mechanism is rather simple, it works for most updates
as syntax incompatibilities are rare. AFAIK, Privoxy updates with
syntax incompatibilities currently are inconvenient on all platforms.

> 2. The iPhone offers no file browser, there's not even one for
> jailbroken phones, and in my opinion even the 'average' jailbroken
> iPhone user is unlikely to be au fait with the shell prompt or SSH. On
> this basis, what do you all feel about the idea of distributing this
> version with browser-based action file editing enabled by default?

I don't think that would be wise.

There's a fair chance that the iPhone's default browser
configuration allows remote sites to reconfigure Privoxy
through the action file editor behind the user's back.

> On 2012-04-18, at 3:50 PM, Ian Silvester wrote:
> 
> > On 2012-04-18, at 3:13 PM, Fabian Keil wrote:
> > 
> >> Ian Silvester <[email protected]> wrote:

> >>>                    To be clear we're breaking no laws in any of this
> >>> - there are those that might argue that the iPhone owners do so when
> >>> they jailbreak their phones, but even that is not the case in at
> >>> least the United States, the one territory where to my knowledge it
> >>> has been challenged in law.
> >> 
> >> Jailbreaking is considered legal in Germany as well, additionally
> >> the legal responsibility isn't shared (here) anyway, but remains
> >> with the individual developer/distributor.

Correction: While it doesn't matter in case of jailbreaking, I recently
read ("Open Source Software", 2. Auflage, Jaeger/Metzger) that the legal
responsibility might actually be shared.

Fabian

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