CootSoft's Limited Open Source policy

The source code for various CootSoft products is being made available on a limited open-source basis. A nonexclusive license is granted to view this source code, for the purposes of personal education and a better understanding of the functionality of the product, including recompilation of the project for non-commerical use, provided the attribution blocks remain with the code.

In addition to these (Objective C) class code sources, regeneration of an application will in general require some number of additional files, such as Interface Builder nib/xib files, image png files, etc. If you cannot manage to recreate these, please contact our support email address.

Compilation of the unmodified or trivially modified sources for the purpose of commercial competition with CootSoft is expressly prohibited.

Offer not valid in sectors R or S.

LUSER proposal

As things stand, you can download the SDK for free and develop applications that run on the simulator, but if you want your app to run on a device, No Soup For You! unless you pay Apple $100 to be a developer. How do we reconcile the idea of Free Software with this situation?

CootSoft is considering the notion of offering our customers the following deal:

• If you have developed a fix or small enhancement to one of our applications, send the fixes to us.
• We will, at our sole discretion, add your fix to the next version of that application. We will give you credit in the source code. Your fix will become part of the source code and will be made available under the same restrictions as our source code. We will make sure you get a free copy of the updated application that contains your code.
• If we decide not to accept the fix in the mainline, we are trying to decide if there is some way we can provide you with the ability to run code with your fix.
• One way to do this, of course, would be for us to put the updated application up on the Apple store as one of our applications. We would make sure you get a free copy of the updated application that contains your code, however, any profit made from sales of this alternative version would go to us, not you.
• Another possibility is to distribute the compiled code back to you as a beta test or ad-hoc version. The problem here is that profiles have a limited lifespan, and we'd have to see what happens when the profile expires. Does the application stop working? Or do you just lose the ability to install on future devices?
• Of course, if you decide to pay the $100 and become a developer, we would transfer the alternate program back to you. However, since it would be a modification of our code, which carries the open source requirement, we would require you to make the source available on the same basis as we made it available to you.
• This offer would be available only for bug fixes or simple extensions to our program. We're not going to do this for code that has the same relationship to our programs as the shuttle external tank has to the orbiter. We retain the right to, in our sole and exclusive discretion, refuse to do this for code we believe violates our contractual duties to Apple.
• Clearly if Apple objects to this arrangement it will not be possible to do this.

We call this the Limited User Sourcecode Extension Request proposal.

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