The App Fair Project requires that all apps that it distributes be licensed under the GNU General Public License. When the project builds and distributes these apps through to the commercial app store channels (e.g., the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store), the GPL is the one and only license that dictates the distribution terms. While many developers have historically chosen the GPL on moral grounds, the App Fair’s choice of this license is more pragmatic: a strong copyleft license is the practical way to protect the community efforts that go into building these applications and defend them against bad actors.

A major problem with free or open-source software on commercial app stores is that once they achieve any level of notoriety, they immediately become a target for grifters who take the source code, bundle in some extra profit-seeking software (typically ad-banners or spyware “analytics” packages), and then re-publish the same app with a deceptively similar name and some slick marketing. When the app’s source code has been published under one of the non-copyleft permissive licenses (Apache, BSD, MIT, etc.), there is basically nothing the developer can do to prevent it: you gave your code away, no strings attached, and they took it and monetized it. Fair play, as far as the free-riding imposters are concerned. For these reasons, the permissive licenses are often referred to as “pushover licenses”.

Copyleft licenses like the GPL serve as an effective defense against these grifts. The GPL permits anyone to create derivative works from the published source code, but only if those derivative works themselves also publish their source code. And that includes all the source code, which would include all the data-gathering and advertisement-serving SDKs that infest so many of the ostensibly “free” apps that dominate the charts of the commercial app stores. Publishing and distributing an app without also publishing the source code, while certainly possible, is a violation of the terms of the GPL, and thus the original developer has a very straightforward recourse: report the violation to Apple or Google or whoever runs the store, and they will be obligated to remove the offending application promptly.

One might therefore assume that copyleft licenses would be the dominant form of license for free/open-source apps on the commercial app stores. However, in iOS app developer circles, there is a persistent misconception that GPL apps are not permitted at all on the Apple App Store. On the face of it, this is clearly nonsense: many of the most-downloaded apps on the App Store are published under the GPL: Signal, Element, Wordpress, SimpleNote, IceCubes, iSH, Bitwarden, Mastodon, Telegram, and Proton Mail, just to name a few. I myself have published numerous GPL apps to the App Store, with nary a peep from Apple about the license during their app review process.

Apple has never said that GPL-licensed apps are disallowed on their app store. The truth is, Apple couldn’t care less about how you license your software. The origin of the anti-GPL App Store policy canard started as a result of a one-sided kerfuffle from 2010, where the Free Software Foundation heard that there was a rogue GNU Go app floating around the App Store. As the copyright and trademark holders, the FSF complained to Apple about the app violating their rights1, and as a result, Apple removed the app from their App Store. Such actions are a daily occurrence: when a piece of software is identified as violating the laws of a jurisdiction, the distributor of the software is obligated to remove it. Unfortunately, the FSF decided to interpret this in a follow-up blog post as evidence that Apple “has it in” for free software:

Apple has removed GNU Go from the App Store, continuing their longstanding habit of preventing users from doing anything that Apple doesn’t want them to do.2

Fast-forward 15 years to the present day, and the chilling effect of this statement has metastasized – with much strategic amplification by opponents of software freedom – into an overwhelming sentiment among iOS app developers that the GPL is an outright prohibited license for their App Store. No amount of evidence – such as the aforementioned list of GPL apps like Signal, etc. – seems enough to dissuade iOS developers from shunning the GPL in favor of non-copyleft pushover licenses that leave them at risk of having their work taken and re-distributed as adware-infested junk with impunity. Or, more likely, they simply choose to keep their source code closed rather than share it with the world and risk being taken advantage of.

Much has changed since 2010. In 20153, Apple loosened their grip and started permitting anyone to compile and run software on their own iPhone, without needing an Apple Developer account. And the Digital Markets Act in the European Union, which came into effect in 2023, compelled Apple to open up their App Store monopoly to competition, enabling for the first time alternative app marketplaces to begin distributing software under their own terms4. These two factors alone are sufficient to comply with the GPL’s requirements and the four essential freedoms5 that it protects.

It is true that the Apple App Store has many problematic policies: usage restrictions, mandatory DRM, and the ability for a single central company to remotely disable and remove software without the user’s consent. But the Google Play Store also has nearly identical policies, and yet the GPL is a relatively popular license to use among Android app developers. One of the main drivers for the difference in this perception is the FSF’s historic antipathy towards Apple and general tolerance towards Google, despite these corporations being two halves of the mobile device duopoly and enacting nearly identical policies for the terms of software distribution on their commercial app marketplaces. But regardless – and even without the aforementioned concessions on the part of Apple – the GPLv3 has a clause that renders any concerns about the policies of these app stores moot. Section 7 states:

If the Program as you received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove that term.6

In other words, the commercial app stores can slap whatever GPL-violating terms and conditions they want onto the software that they distribute. And the end user can duly ignore all of them, and continue to exercise their rights to study, modify, and redistribute the software however they want.

When the FSF first took their position on the GPL and the Apple App Store in 2010, smartphones were still something of a novelty. Since that time, their presence has expanded astronomically: there are over 5 billion active smartphones in 2025, and nearly 90% of adults worldwide possess one and use it daily. Like it or not, smartphones are the central computer in the everyday life for the vast majority of humanity. If free software is denied to users of these devices, then free software is doomed to extinction, and humankind will be forever subject to the injustices of proprietary and opaque software. It is time the Free Software Foundation took another look at their position on how free software – specifically, apps licensed under the GPL – can have a place in this modern world.

  1. GPL Enforcement in Apple’s App Store https://www.fsf.org/news/2010-05-app-store-compliance ↩

  2. More about the App Store GPL Enforcement https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl-enforcement ↩

  3. Xcode 7 allows anyone to download, build and ‘sideload’ iOS apps for free https://9to5mac.com/2015/06/10/xcode-7-allows-anyone-to-download-build-and-sideload-ios-apps-for-free/ ↩

  4. Digital Markets Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Markets_Act ↩

  5. The four essential freedoms https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html#four-freedoms ↩

  6. GNU General Public License Section 7: Additional Terms https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html#section7 ↩