The Mana World Forums

Since we have a thread for iphone i'd like to ask if someone of you have tried to run tmw on windows mobile. Is it possible? ;o

its more likely to run on windows mobile then the iPhone.

The SDKs for both platforms are freely available.

Anyone is free to try.

Publishing with these SDKs is a different question altogether, though.

There is licensing issues with the iPhone though.

The person who showed Mana on the iPhone, his iPhone was jailbroken (which is illegal). And the client was not actually on the iPhone, it was just streamed to the iPhone. All the code was ran on another machine.

Legally, no open source application (at least GPL) can ever run on the iPhone.

While you are free to create your own client, you'll have to start over. BUT THE MANA CLIENT OR ANY CODE IN THE MANA CLIENT OR MANASERV OR EATHENA CAN NOT LEGALLY RUN ON THE iPHONE.

End of discussion.

Now on a Windows CE, there should not be much issue legally, so only a technical limit is there.

Kage wrote:Legally, no open source application (at least GPL) can ever run on the iPhone.

Are you sure about that?

GPL just means that you have to make the sourcecode available (which can be done through some other method than delivering it with the application) and to allow everyone to modify and/or resell the software under the same conditions (which they can also do through the app store).

Apple making this hard by charging money for putting applications into the app store, not allowing their customers to run software not obtained through their app store and their censoring of the app store might be an obstacle for the free software distribution model but I don't think that this is generally ruling out GPL applications on the iPhone. Especially considering that it can't do anything against porting GPL licensed applications to other platforms.

Remember: GPL means free as in freedom, not free as in free beer. Distributing and obtaining GPL software does not need to be for free (this is mentioned explicitely in the GPL).

Unless of course Apple is generally banning GPL applications from the app store for some reason, but this would be new for me. I would also be very surprised when their would be no GPL code at all in the huge apple app store portfolio.

A discussion about this topic on another site: http://diveintomark.org/archives/2008/03/07/iphone-gpl


Also off topic but in a different direction: Another worthwhile platform for a TMW port would be Google Android, in my opinion. Android also got an app store which is, like the one from apple, neither uncensored nor free to use. But the difference is that Android users are allowed to download and run applications obtained from other sources.

I been googling this, and seems nobody really knows. Until a court system rules one way or another, there is no real way to know, just hypothetical talk.

However, if someone does modify the Mana Client, and intends to release it under GPLv2 or later on the iPhone. There are MANY issues about the freedom of modification and redistribution of the software. Also, there is a lot of talk that the GPLv3 anti TiVoization clause would prevent GPLv3 on the iPhone.

"When you convey a covered work, you waive any legal power to forbid circumvention of technological measures to the extent such circumvention is effected by exercising rights under this License with respect to the covered work, and you disclaim any intention to limit operation or modification of the work as a means of enforcing, against the work's users, your or third parties' legal rights to forbid circumvention of technological measures."

From my understanding the iPhone has technologies, that only allow Apple approved (signed) apps to run. And this circumvents the user from modifying the program, even if they have the source code.

Either way, iPhone's policy is a direct conflict with the idea of Open Source and Free Software. Even if you were able to find a loop hole in the GPLv2, or even more unlikely, GPLv3. Its still against the sprite of why the copyright was placed. And I would be willing to take to at least talk to a lawyer about anyone wanting to redistribute the Mana Client on the iPhone about GPL violations.

Rotonen wrote:The SDKs for both platforms are freely available.

Anyone is free to try.

Publishing with these SDKs is a different question altogether, though.

Unfortunately i'm not good at windows stuff, would be great to find someone with knowledge who could try it. Imagine playing tmw on phone