@newt
@Suiseiseki @iwillbite

> No, it doesn't. You may run telegram client code as you wish, for any purpose.

The sole purpose of their clients is to connect to their servers so you can communicate with other people. If the API rejects your requests then it can't fulfill that purpose and therefore it breaks freedom 0, hence why it can't be GPLed.

Even if they managed to stick to the license by letter it would be a similar case as with TiVO where the developer is a bad actor that tries to abuse or restrict software freedom by spirit, being de-facto proprietary, which is what Telegram does regardless of case.


> Metatext code is under GPL and the binaries in appstore are produced from that code. You can download the code for any version of Metatext from GitHub at any time.

Given the client is intended to be used to connect to Fediverse servers it's way less likely that goes against GPL by spirit but there's plenty of ways to enforce TiVOization or proprietary jails, Apple is an offender on both of those.

Apple software being under copyleft licensing is devs lying themselves at best or a maliciously deceiving move at worst (like with Telegram clients).


> I have no idea what "the binary is not under GPL" even means, the entire phrase is a complete non sequitur.

Apple forbids copyleft software distribution, so whatever software you see that regularly is copyleft/GPL distributed through their "store" is licensed under a different licensing. One similar example of multi-licensing is VSCode.

There's also the possible scenario where the dev/s reached an agreement to allow Metatex to be distributed under GPL on their "store", or Apple doesn't care to enforce that policy, or the dev breaks their policy which would be based, or both.