A VLC developer complained to Apple about a copyright violation in October.
Apple pulled it unilaterally yesterday, after more than 2 months of silence, after refusing to help people, notably me, to solve the matter. So, Apple is definitively "part of this".
Not to mention that you are speaking about "VLC" which doesn't mean anything, since it isn't a legal entity.
And to finish "AppStore license terms" change all the time... So it is hard to "play within the bounds".
> Apple pulled it unilaterally yesterday, after more than 2 months of silence, after refusing to help people, notably me, to solve the matter.
Of course they did. It took them two months to process the complaint after one of the VideoLAN developers made it, but they followed through on an action that "a VLC developer" initiated.
With respect, if a developer representing VideoLAN complains to Apple, and another developer representing VideoLAN and claiming to be in charge approaches and tries to "work it out", Apple is not going to step into what appears to be an internal dispute. I am never an Apple apologist as I think they're a bit heavy-handed with the App Store, but in this case, how would you expect them to act?
This is what "a VLC developer" wanted, and he got it. I don't think Apple is the bad guy here in the slightest. I hope you're not trying to shift blame from the developer who initiated this to an easy target, Apple, because your original comment in this thread would make it appear that way.
"simply, by answering to the mails asking for clarifications on the ToS, so a solution could have come up."
Yeah, but unfortunately one of your team members, Rémi Denis-Courmont, had already used the nuclear option: informing Apple about a copyright infringement and asking them to remove the app from the store. So that is what Apple did.
The problem is that you guys are not working as a team. One person, Remi, is extremely bitter about this app being on the store (see the wording of his messages and that last blog post) and basically wants it to disappear forever.
I do not see any signals that Remi is approaching this the same way as you. You seem to want to resolve this, he just wants the app to be gone and never appear again.
You keep saying that there is no such thing as 'VLC the legal entity'. And that is probably how it looks from Apple's perspective: one guy requests the app to be removed, some other random person is trying to fix things.
In other words: you guys messed this up by not being a coherent team. Remi should have NEVER EVER sent that message. You guys should have come to agreement and worked with Apple as a team.
Fixing this is probably possible, but it requires cooperation from Rémi Denis-Courmont. You guys (here I say it again) will probably have to send a more formal letter to Apple to retract the initial complaint and then see if you can work together to fix this or to be more lenient and to simply say: we know this situation is not ideal, but thinking of millions of users who are using our software, we are going to let this happen anyway to see if we things can change in the longer term.
> "you guys messed this up by not being a coherent team"
See it like that if you want. But the fact is that in project without copyright assignment, anyone can make things go haywire...
To close the matter, because this takes ridiculously too much of my time: Rémi sent a message 2,5 months ago; Apple refused to answer my questions to solve the matter in the meantime; and then Apple removed the application without telling anyone in before.
Turn it in away way you want, I still don't find Apple's way a correct (nor polite) way, and I don't care if they get bad PR for that.
In the end, people getting screwed up are the users...
I've explained to you many times, that "You guys" doesn't mean anything and that one developer did complain alone. And that noone can control all developers in a non-copyright assignment project...
Your attitude is really annoying, and very aggressive around the whole thread...
A VLC developer complained to Apple about a copyright violation in October.
Apple pulled it unilaterally yesterday, after more than 2 months of silence, after refusing to help people, notably me, to solve the matter. So, Apple is definitively "part of this".
Not to mention that you are speaking about "VLC" which doesn't mean anything, since it isn't a legal entity.
And to finish "AppStore license terms" change all the time... So it is hard to "play within the bounds".