Re: Ada on Apple's new procesors

[Optikos <ZUERCHER_Andreas@outlook.com>]

On Tuesday, June 30, 2020 at 6:16:40 AM UTC-5, Fabien Chouteau wrote:
> On Thursday, June 25, 2020 at 6:15:47 PM UTC+2, Optikos wrote:
> > this later closed-source processing of the app by Apple for nonjailbroken ARM-based Macs and iDevices to distribute via the App Store seems to violate terms of at least the RLE if not GPLv3 too.
> 
> The Apple app store is incompatible with the GPL since long ago: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more
> about-the-app-store-gpl-enforcement

Yes, when the developer's app is GPLed, the App Store's terms and the GPL's terms are mutually incompatible.  Historically, GPLing an app would have been by developer choice (unless somehow violating the RLE which was rare in practice because using garden-variety unmodified IR-unadorned GNAT, GCC, and so forth resulted in an Eligible Compilation Process in RLE).

> I don't see anything new here.

What is new here is that there appear to be well-reasoned ways (e.g., the Wide legal theory along this thread) that GNAT-LLVM could •force• a developer's app to GPLed against the developer's will by easy-to-enact-in-GNAT-LLVM violations of the RLE's terms that cause the Compilation Process to not achieve the stricter Eligible Compilation Process definition, due to Apple's closed-source manipulations of LLVM IR bitcode.

Perhaps the work-around is that GNAT-LLVM-based developers of apps should •never• submit LLVM IR bitcode to Apple's App Store's app-intake procedure.  In the past as far back as 2015, submitting bitcode instead of machine code was optional.  It is unclear with the new ARM-based Macs, whether that optionality will continue in the future, or whether that optionality has already been curtailed.

(Conversely, under the Narrow legal theory along this thread, your claim is correct, nothing has changed:  if an app-developer doesn't want to suffer the mutual incompatibility of the GPL and Apple App Store, then don't choose GPL as the license for the app, because despite its name LLVM IR bitcode is merely assembly language which is unregulated by RLE.)