The issue is so much simpler than you all make of it. And Apple is essentially not liable or responsible. The developer is the one who may be doing something wr

The issue is so much simpler than you all make of it. And Apple is essentially not liable or responsible. The developer is the one who may be doing something wrong. It goes like this: the developer enters into two separate agreements. One is with the open source community, as he is re-using code licensed under the GPL. Any modifications and new code that links to that open source code, he must re-publish in source code. Two, is the agreement with Apple to use the SDK and its APIs. Apple places restrictions on what you can say about the APIs (namely, that you can't say much at all:-). If the developer modifies GPL code and mixes it with confidential APIs from Apple, he is stuck. He can either publish the source, and Apple can go after him, or he can keep the source confidential, and the authors of the Open Source code can go after him since he is using their code without a license (copyright infringment). That's it. Apple is not particularly liable for what developers do. Of course, in practice, Apple being the company with big pockets, if I was trying to make a billion dollars from such a case, I'd sue Apple, not the poor Russian developer in their basement.