Apple is in violation of the software’s licence for distributing these GPL applications through the App Store in the first place.
[From John Gruber doesn’t understand freedom // plasmasturm.org]
The title of that post is a little confrontational but “John Gruber doesn’t understand the FSF’s narrow definition of freedom as it applies the distribution of software” was too long.
Anyway, I’m curious what Apple or the developers have to do to resolve this, if they care to. Is the GPL enforceable? Would Apple face some penalty? If you distribute the source code but the development/deployment environment requires additional resources (a developer key or API access code), does that mean the GPL has been violated? So far, Google and WordPress have put wares in the App store. Are they the sinners, is it Apple, or all of them?
I had this conversation with the Learned Professors at The Worst Job I Ever Had and they thought the GPL’s provisions requiring source code were goofy, as they had no interest in hacking or building from source. But I argued at the time that just because they couldn’t didn’t mean no one else was interested.