Apple pulls VLC from the App Store

Months of speculation preceeded the action but today Apple officially pulled the popular media streaming app VLC from its App Store.

VLC for iPhone and iPad gained approval back in September, existing as a side project from the official desktop application by VideoLAN. After months of contention between the app developers, the creators of the desktop application and Apple, the app was removed at VideoLAN’s request because Apple’s App Store contravenes various parts of the GPL license under which it was released.

The official statement came from Rémi Denis-Courmont, posting on the Planet VideoLAN website:

At last, Apple has removed VLC media player from its application store. Thus the incompatibility between the GNU General Public License and the AppStore terms of use is resolved – the hard way. This end should not have come to a surprise to anyone, given the precedents.

There you have it. It’s quite evident the iPhone app was not supported by the VideoLAN community. When software uses a GPL license, any third-party revisions must adhere to them also. In the case of the iPhone app, you can see it did not. To reiterate, Apple had nothing to do with its removal (other than to physically pull it from the store), the beef was between the respective developers.

Were you a user of VLC on your iPad or iPhone? Have you found a decent alternative? Let us know in the comments.