Just to add an anecdote to the other answers here: nearly 25 years ago now, I remember buying a copy of Mandrake Linux at Staples. I knew then that I wasn't paying for a license to use the software (as would be the case with MS Windows) but rather I was paying a fee to have the software distributed on a CD in a box with paper documentation. This was at a time when broadband was not yet common, so getting a pre-packaged CD was a lot more convenient. I can't remember what I paid but it was much less than the closed-source stuff.
Told this one already, I think. We requested 5k or so copies (the max allowed in the form) of CDs and DVDs (red and orange stripe respectively) of Ubuntu, using a personal college email, but as address we set one of my friends mum's house.
LSS, Cannonical delivered, and his mom's face was a poem when we arrived to "take out all those frinckin boxes in the porch".
I'm guessing that the majority of Linux users will use Ubuntu or a distro based on it. Out of the box, ready and stable software is really great because you don't need the time to configure it and maintain it, time which most people won't have.
(I use KDE neon btw)
Arch users that bully "beginner" Linux distro users: (insert virgin gif)
Arch users that don't bully you for your distro of choice: (insert fat gigachad gif)
I use Arch btw
No. Arch has its own repository and team of package maintainers. Arch uses pacman for its package manager, not apt like Debian. Arch's packages are typically among the newest available, even newer than Debian's testing/sid. Arch sticks to upstream/vanilla software configuration. Sometimes other distros tweak things in how they're configured and/or compiled.
I think there is an option for using a graphical installer for Arch as an installation ISO, but it's not the default. I've not used it myself. I've only used the default CLI installer with the Arch wiki in "choose your own adventure" fashion whenever there were different installation options for filesystems, bootloader's, etc.
I think it's interesting from a psychological point of view. Imagine identifying with something so much that you need to fight people who don't agree.
Politics, sports, teams... Linux distros I guess.. :)
But it's intentional. We are literally told in school to compete and compare with eachother, and society keeps on telling us the same shit all our lives, that we need to buy or use highly marketed items to get higher social status. Makes us great consumers though, good for company profits. :)
I didn't really do much more than get my feet wet with it, but I did learn about dual-booting and open source software and I'm now an avid Linux user on the server side of things---I still prefer Windows for every day desktop stuff. But yeah, Mandrake got me started all those years ago.
My step brothers are hard core Mac people and they used to make fun of me with my “home made Mac-drake box.” I still daily drive Windows but I always have a distro on dual boot so I don’t feel like a total old guy and sell out. Lol.
Similarly, this person paid for their Google Play account (100$?) and a 1.99$ game, from which 30% go to Google, will take quite some time to recoup. Besides that, there's User support and complains to manage, Google Play moving the post and rules all the time or requiring more from your apps, and sorts of bureaucracy from having Google Play apps. I doubt this person is getting rich from this game.
Because they can. Just because something is open source, doesn’t mean that you can’t charge money for it. But it ultimately depends on the license, though.
As Richard Stallman said, it's "free as in freedom, not free as in free beer".
The GPL does not prohibit charging money for distribution of software, it prohibits restrictions on the freedom to change the software and the freedom to have access to the source code.
It’s so annoying that there isn’t a word for that in English. Many other languages have it. Swedish for example: fri - “free as in speech”, gratis - “free as in free beer, eg. no cost”.
that's exactly what makes "libre" the best loanword to use. If someone goes what's that you go straight into what it *is* rather than what it isn't (I hate that free as in freedom line)
Yes that's my point. Freedom is the noun, free is the adjective that does also mean free of charge. Liberty is the noun but doesnt have an adjective form thus you can use whatever (eg libre)
Most plans have a GB limit, though. They have limits. “Unlimited surf” is a another word for “fri surf”. But you will never find something that is “fri” and free of cost.
Also, in the past they would absolutely limit what websites you could visit. It wasn’t until EU made network neutrality into law that stopped.
It might not seem right to you, but that’s the way it is with open source. I assume it’s under some GPL or MIT license? In that case you can go ahead and compile the code yourself and offer it for free to the world, if you want. Nobody is stopping you.
Ok. Fair point. I apologize for my lack of knowledge on this, and I appreciate you explaining it to me. Honestly, looks like this person has added extras to make it a better port and again, I’m totally willing to pay for that to play one of my favorite games on my phone.
It's probably at least partly to support the guy and compensate him for the cost it takes to put it on the App Store. The Android version is freely available through sideloading but costs money on the Play Store which indicates that. Since there's no sideloading on iOS, there's no free version of it on iOS.
I know about AltStore, I just didn't want to go too much into detail. The point was that putting stuff on the App Store costs money and that's why the app costs money.
There's a fundamental difference between source code and its license, and binaries of source code.
See, the game publisher is publishing a binary of the game. It certainly was not easy to get the game and port it to Android, compile, package, and publish.
If the binary generated does contain certain changes to the game, then the GPL license can be enforced to ensure that those changes are also made public upon request, but this doesn't change the fact that a binary has been published and it is not free of charge.
That looks like the iOS App Store, which puts up some major obstacles to compiling code yourself. You need the iOS SDK in Xcode, which is macOS-only. You might even need a developer license for $99/year, but I think you can avoid that if you are willing to re-sign your app every 2 weeks.
So this is a case where the binary is worth more than a little compute and a little download.
The reason it doesn't usually make sense to charge for someone else's open source project is not that it's against any license, but because anyone else is free to provide the same thing for free, so unless you're selling to someone that doesn't know this, or the price is low enough that people are merely paying for the convenience of it being prepackaged for their needs, it's not competitive.
Note: If this person has extended this game with their own additions, if it's gpl software those additions will also be open source.
Open source also allows it. You are thinking of non-open licenses that only gives you limited rights to look at the source code but without an open license.
https://opensource.org/osd/
Incorrect. Just as the commercialization of software is a requirement for free software license to be fsf approved, it’s also a requirement for an open source license to be osi approved.
> Free Distribution. The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
https://opensource.org/osd/
Otherwise, it’s neither open source nor free software. Might be source available, but that’s still proprietary software.
Fuck the fsf and gnu. That’s what THEIR definition of free/open source software is, but it clearly makes no sense at all. Almost all licenses provide limitations to how one can use the code, a commercial or military or something limitation is NOT a reason to call the software proprietary.
Excuse me? This is the Open Source Definition by the Open Source Initiative. If that’s what you think, take it up to them. I’m sure they’d be willing to change the OSD just for you…
to be accurate, if a bit pedantic, they don’t stop various hackery you can do to emulate macos/xcode/whatever without their computer. They just don’t care to *help* you with that either.
Same thing happening with asahi linux. They’re not stopping anyone from getting linux working on the M chips, but the company is not officially doing anything to help either, even though there are contributions from apple engineers.
> even though there are contributions from apple engineers
I haven't heard about this. Could you provide examples of Apple engineers contributing to Asahi Linux?
If that's the case, then that might be part of the reason the publisher is charging for it. It cost them money to get it on iOS, and now they are charging money for it.
I've seen other open source projects being sold for money too on the app store. Not only do you need apple hardware, but there's also a 100$/yr fee apple charges for the privilege of being a developer. I can fully understand why devs are charging money like this
However, a Hackintosh does violate the EULA/ToS of MacOS. Running afoul of that agreement is a great way to get any app pulled and your dev account blacklisted.
> you can go ahead and compile the code yourself and offer it for free to the world, if you want.
You need to have a Mac and pay $100/year developer fee to Apple though.
let's check them, the game itself it GPLv2, they must provide you a link to the source of the game *that compiles that version of the game.* Remember, a GPL-licence work can't be re-licenced unless by the original author.
I'm curious to see if they're in compliance. If they aren't, report them to the Free Software Foundation!
In this case the original copyright holder is a long defunct company, and this is a fork which has other copyright holders.
The FSF cannot do anything, other than maybe help the copyright holders sue if it is a violation. It would be more useful to contact the development team, but i cannot see any obvious way to do so: https://sourceforge.net/projects/extremetuxracer/
I’m 90% sure you’re right. But I also could’ve sworn that I read something up about how you can take legal action against GPL violations even if you don’t own the copyright. I’ll update if I find anything.
Edit: [https://web.archive.org/web/20110127140245/http://www.lokkju.com/blog/archives/91](https://web.archive.org/web/20110127140245/http://www.lokkju.com/blog/archives/91)
It seems it's not possible that they are compliant (or maybe it -was- not, in 2010?).
From the horse's mouth (or gnu mouth), about another GPLv2 software (GnuGo):
https://www.fsf.org/news/2010-05-app-store-compliance
>The primary problem is that Apple imposes numerous legal restrictions on use and distribution of GNU Go through the iTunes Store Terms of Service, which is forbidden by section 6 of GPLv2.
That's impossible when it's on the apple app store. Since apple always adds apple specific non free code to any software.
That's why not a single GPL licensed software is on the app store. Either it's dual licensed by the original authors, or it's a GPL violation.
So (unless it's the original author, which I really doubt) you can be sure its a license violation.
Probably someone just tries do make some quick money of other peoples work.
> That's impossible when it's on the apple app store. Since apple always adds apple specific non free code to any software.
Source? I tried to find something with Google "apple app store adds code to app", but I didn't find anything.
> That's why not a single GPL licensed software is on the app store.
Look for Mindustry. It's GPLv3 licensed and on the app store.
Edit: Seems like this is the source https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl-enforcement
Edit2: After reading through the source, your statement about Apple adding non-free code to software just seems wrong. Even GNU Go would be on the App store if there weren't these other more legal limitations that Apple imposes.
> Source?
I read this some time ago. My first google result was this:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5784169/does-apple-modify-ios-application-executables-on-apps-submitted-to-the-app-store
So maybe they don't add code, but they definetly modify uploaded binaries, which is also not gpl3 compatible (unless the the modifications are reprodusable)
https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/898/how-does-gpl-affect-binary-only-modifications
Usually, it goes like this for paid OSS:
- if the software is GPL, you are paying for the convenience of not having to compile it yourself
- if the software is MIT, you could pay for the above as well, but it is also possible that you are paying for a closed source fork which may or may not have added features
If this is a dev then it's totally reasonable for them to charge for it. Many open source applications use a similar model, especially on mobile - one model I've seen a few times is providing it for free on f-droid (although anyone else could do the same even if the dev didn't) and charging for it on the play store.
If this isn't a dev and they've done nothing to the code then they can still legally do this (unless the play store terms prohibit it or the name tux racer is trademarked; you might struggle to argue it's passing off as it's the same product), because that's how (most, if not all) open-source licences work. But it would be a scumbag move to sell an open-source product on a digital platform when you have nothing to do with it.
The screenshot in the original post is of the iOS App Store, so no side loading sadly (without going through hoops). Since you need both a Mac (or rather, macOS) and a $99/yr developer account to compile and publish to the App Store, it seems reasonable to charge a fee for the game.
This needs to be much higher. It would be nice if the page on the App Store mentioned the repo and the license, but it is still good to see he is sharing the changes (and he is only required to share changes to people who purchased it).
>and he is only required to share changes to people who ~~purchased it~~ **he distributed it to**
Technical difference, as he also need to share the change to those he is giving free copies to (if any)
Small but significant correction: _open source_ does not imply nor guarantee any freedoms. A book is open source but does not come with freedom of redistribution. Code is similar. By default, code falls under strict copyright. Making it available for anyone to see does not change that and does not permit readers from copying it.
The freedoms people think of with “open source” come from the license people distribute their code with. Common free-as-in-freedom code is distributed under licenses like the GPL, MIT or Apache licenses. Each have their own set of actions a user of the software is permitted or forbidden of soon with the software and its source code.
More information about this can be found on the [choosealicense website][1]
[1]: https://choosealicense.com/no-permission/
If they took the time to port the game to iOS and pay Apple to publish it in the app store I don't see how this is outrageous. If the game is GPL licensed though, they have to release the modifications they made to the source code, so if you really don't want to pay you could set up a dev environment, compile it yourself and install it to your device for free (or whatever Apple charges for the dev environment idk)
Happy to pay for it, just didn’t understand if it was ok. Not looking to hurt the community in anyway, so thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask. 😀. Thanks for the thoughts and info on how the process they had to go through would likely discourage someone from just randomly doing it.
Developing for iOS kind of really sucks, so it's not uncommon for open source apps to cost money there. Not only is it a pain to actually develop and publish anything on iOS in the first place, but Apple's Terms of Service is also very stupid about GPLed code, which makes it even more annoying to publish any kind of FOSS on iOS.
Blink Shell, which is arguably the best iOS SSH client, costs $20 in spite of being open source. $2 for a game like this with no ads seems entirely fair.
Back in the day XChat (the IRC client) used to ask money for official Windows binaries because the developer did not like compiling it on Windows. Nothing stopped anyone from compiling it themselves nor from distributing their own binaries, though, so there were 3rd party Windows builds available at no cost.
Same happens today. Krita on Linux is free but it's paid under Microsoft store. Ardour is free on Linux because people take the time to build it, but it's paid on windows as well
>Same happens today. Krita on Linux is free but it's paid under Microsoft store.
No, that's just because it helps fund the developers. Krita developers also offer free downloads for Windows on their website
Problem with Krita is that they conveniently adjusted the app description to "hide" the information that it's actually free to download:
* Home Page: Krita is a professional FREE and open source painting program. (...)
* MS Store: Krita is a full-featured digital painting application (...)
* Steam: Krita is a powerful, open source and community-driven (...)
I'm 99% sure that saying "it is free" on a page asking to pay would be a TOS violation, accusating of bringing searches for "free" and scamming people a rembursed download or something like that.
It cost money to have an Apple Developer Program Account. So free apps on the App Store needs some way of recovering that investment, either with ads or with a one-time price.
The price for a year to have the "privilege" to publish apps on the App Store is 99 USD.
EDIT: Link removed, wrong tux racer - apologies.
>The price for a year to have the "privilege" to publish apps on the App Store is 99 USD.
That's so fucking stupid. On google play store it's 15 bucks *once*. How do they expect developers to publish cool free of charge apps when they make it so prohibitively expensive?
I would guess the vast majority of app purchases are from a tiny minority of developers, but everyone thinks they're going to be in that tiny minority. Apple is simply monetizing the vast majority as well. Modern capitalism in a nutshell.
> How do they expect developers to publish cool free of charge apps
Why do you think Apple wants users with expectations that a small addition could be free? The whole point of Apple is basically to pay extra for "premium" service.
Being Open Source or even Free Software doesn't mean you can't charge for it. There are some licenses that prevent commercial use, but the main FLOSS licenses don't prohibit it.
They're still required to provide the source code for it and you can build it yourself, but they're not required to give it away for free, even if there is another place you can get it for free.
If you want, you can even build it yourself and sell it too or give it away, provided you also provide the source code.
As others have noted, it's completely reasonable to charge for it. Although you might be unaware that chances are many of the devices you use everyday contain GPL licensed software that are part of a paid product.. for example Android phones, many routers, even Windows itself contains both BSD & GPL licensed components!
Also, just my additional controversial opinion:
More open source software _should_ cost money, that way the quality, support & polish would improve, and it'd also potentially entice more firms to supporting Linux (e.g. Adobe).
For starters I'm not sure there's anything in the license that says they can't, and also they're maintaining their own mobile forks of open source games.
https://drodin.com/
You're just paying for the app store access to those games, and also maybe supporting the dev who spent time porting them to mobile.
The drodin website has links to every source port they've made for IOS and Android, so they're following the terms of the GPL license.
edit: It seems to me that this dev also basically had to maintain their own mac branch of Extreme Tux Racer, which probably means getting the game to work in the ios supported version of OpenGL.
If at any point OpenGL was dropped in IOS, I assume this dev would also have to make a metal fork of the graphics, or get an openGL shim.
In fairness, this developer is maintaining their own fork and seems to have put significant effort into the Apple and Android ports... They haven't just downloaded and built an existing project and uploaded it to the app stores.
It's [here on Github](https://github.com/drodin/extremetuxracer)...
Because the license permits distribution and commercial use. Open source means people can do whatever they want with it within the stipulations of the license.
As explained by others, it's totally legal to do this. Be careful though before buying, try to make sure your money goes to the team behind the project and not some random dude whose only glory was to open a Play Store account...
Here is the link
[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/extreme-tux-racer/id1522259097](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/extreme-tux-racer/id1522259097)
Where is the GPL code?
Pedantically, you have no right to access the code until the game gets *distributed* to you (aka purchased)
They have a public repo in this case, but it's more convenience/goodwill than a legal obligation besides for actual players
There's a program call aesprite (for drawing art). Its open source. But people still pay 20ish dollars for it. And after compiling it I can understand why. Its definitely a pain.
Under the GPL, you can charge for binaries. You can also not release your build scripts to make the binary. So long as the actual executing code is open sourced.
This is also how Elementary OS in the beta days for 6(?) was charging for precompiled beta ISOs. But you could still build the beta ISO yourself from source.
free as in freedom, not as in beer.
Nothing says you cant charge for open source software, look at redhat https://www.redhat.com/en/store/linux-platforms
In this case.
They have to put in effort to compile the program to run on iOS.
Apple also charges fees for developers to be able to host an app in the first place. Supposedly this is so that they can review every app on the store, but I doubt they actually do that.
So the developer needs a source of revenue in order to keep up with just the fees, not yet accounting for the time spent making it work on a different platform.
Why wouldn't they be able to change money for it? Are you that clueless about how open source software works? They just have to release the source to any changes they made.
This was having to the game vampire survivors as well. People were stealing assets, and mechanics of the game that forced Poncle to release vampire survivors on mobile earlier than intended. People do this, they steal assets and then sell it
Assuming it’s not stolen and the original devs are the ones that posted it to App Store. It’s not unusual for them to do this to bring a small amount of profit and also pay apples yearly developer fee. I know Anki charges for an iPhone app while the desktop one is free. Lots of free flash and web games have their iPhone version paid. Idk I am not against it if there are no ads and it supports the original devs.
Because it's iPhone. A lot of apps are under a paywall because there's a hard way to install .ipa file from your browser. It's not android that you can get whatever app its not in PlayStore.
This is off-topic and a little rant about devs on iOS. But someone can though from the circumstances explained in other comments.
One of the main requirements for something to be open source as defined by osi or free software as defined by fsf is the commercialization of software. If a software license has a non-commercial clause or similar, it’s neither open source nor free software. It’d basically be proprietary software at this point with source available.
Edit: Ignoring all that, you can’t legally distribute programs on the apple store without violating GPL (which this game is licensed under) unless you’re the copyright owner (then you can do whatever you like). This is regardless of the price tag.
Edit 2: To the blind downvoters, here’s the source:
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl-enforcement
It literally isn’t if you're not the copyright holder/author and can't dual license. You’re going to argue with the license creators? Apple embeds some stuff to published apps on their store. They’re proprietary and therefore a GPL violation.
[https://www.fsf.org/news/2010-05-app-store-compliance](https://www.fsf.org/news/2010-05-app-store-compliance)
Edit: This was the update [https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl-enforcement](https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl-enforcement)
You literally have to agree to terms that are conflicting with GPL
>That's the problem in a nutshell: Apple's Terms of Service impose restrictive limits on use and distribution for any software distributed through the App Store, and the GPL doesn't allow that. This specific case involves other issues, but this is the one that's most unique and deserves explanation.
That's a bullshit academic argument that makes no sense and no one actually cares about.
You can build the same app from the source and publish it on the App Store.
Also your link doesn't support your statement. The FSF doesn't like the app store's TOS, that's their entire argument in the link you posted.
Who exactly do you mean by that? The copyright holders, the distributors, apple? Unless you use a dual license solution (you need to be the author), you’d be violating gpl.
https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/59495
So far, you’re just saying “it’s allowed” and “no one cares.” Ignoring that your statements are contradictory, they’re baseless and it sounds like you’re making stuff up. You need to cite sources for you claims.
Edit: Wow, that’s actually petty. Instead of admitting you’re wrong, you block me to avoid hurting your ego. But to reply to your last comment.
> I mean no one. Literally no one cares about this idiotic argument.
This is like the equivalent of saying “who asked,” doesn’t contribute anything to the argument except avoid it by making you somehow feel better. Nonetheless, you forgot that a court would *also* not care whether you cared or not if you broke the license 🤷. Finally, you’re even wrong about that as there are already plenty of GPL programs on the apple store, and the authors have to use other licensing for it. For example, https://github.com/keepassium/KeePassium#license
> So far you’ve cited an fsf article that doesn’t say what you say it does and makes no coherent or accurate argument at all, from twelve years ago. now you’re citing stackexchange? what next, Wikipedia?
Again, completely avoiding the argument for no reason other than to protect your ego. The legalities on GPL software on the apple store have long been discussed numerous times before. I don’t see how it’s invalid just because an amount of time has passed without an actual change of events.
All you keep saying is that it’s an “idiotic argument” when you yourself don’t provide one to begin with. Instead of trying to refute the arguments you fixate on where they’re from, which does nothing to help your argument.
I mean no one. Literally no one cares about this idiotic argument.
So far you’ve cited an fsf article that doesn’t say what you say it does and makes no coherent or accurate argument at all, from twelve years ago. now you’re citing stackexchange? what next, Wikipedia?
Very constructive. Thank you for your input. Seriously though, would you please enlighten me more? That’s how ios developers of gpl programs already operate. https://github.com/keepassium/KeePassium#license
True *free* and open-source means that you are *free* to do whatever you want with it, including selling the product. Just look at all of the paid open source software on the Windows Store
Because free software in the context of FOSS means libre, not gratis. As long as they're publishing the code require by the license (if applicable) they can charge you whatever they want.
You're still completely free to go download and compile the code from source.
Good luck running it on your iPhone without a developer account or jailbreaking though.
Just to add an anecdote to the other answers here: nearly 25 years ago now, I remember buying a copy of Mandrake Linux at Staples. I knew then that I wasn't paying for a license to use the software (as would be the case with MS Windows) but rather I was paying a fee to have the software distributed on a CD in a box with paper documentation. This was at a time when broadband was not yet common, so getting a pre-packaged CD was a lot more convenient. I can't remember what I paid but it was much less than the closed-source stuff.
Reminds me of the Ubuntu CDs. If you were willing to wait over a month, canonical would mail you a free Ubuntu cd
They would send you as many as you wanted. I got a box of 50 so I could give them away.
Told this one already, I think. We requested 5k or so copies (the max allowed in the form) of CDs and DVDs (red and orange stripe respectively) of Ubuntu, using a personal college email, but as address we set one of my friends mum's house. LSS, Cannonical delivered, and his mom's face was a poem when we arrived to "take out all those frinckin boxes in the porch".
imagine using ubuntu, i use arch btw
I use Ubuntu and I love it.
Fuck u/spez. So long and thanks for all the fish.
Very based Ubuntu enjoyer.
I'm guessing that the majority of Linux users will use Ubuntu or a distro based on it. Out of the box, ready and stable software is really great because you don't need the time to configure it and maintain it, time which most people won't have. (I use KDE neon btw)
Arch users that bully "beginner" Linux distro users: (insert virgin gif) Arch users that don't bully you for your distro of choice: (insert fat gigachad gif) I use Arch btw
I use arch too and honestly I recommend endeavor os much more than I do arch as it's basically arch with a gui installer
Same. I like Endeavour. Manjaro sucks imo because the devs are VERY careless, even if my first Arch experience was with Manjaro.
Isn't arch basically debian testing/sid but with a worse installer?
No. Arch has its own repository and team of package maintainers. Arch uses pacman for its package manager, not apt like Debian. Arch's packages are typically among the newest available, even newer than Debian's testing/sid. Arch sticks to upstream/vanilla software configuration. Sometimes other distros tweak things in how they're configured and/or compiled. I think there is an option for using a graphical installer for Arch as an installation ISO, but it's not the default. I've not used it myself. I've only used the default CLI installer with the Arch wiki in "choose your own adventure" fashion whenever there were different installation options for filesystems, bootloader's, etc.
Yea but pacman is so much better than apt, also the AUR exists XD
imagine pointless tribalism
I think it's interesting from a psychological point of view. Imagine identifying with something so much that you need to fight people who don't agree. Politics, sports, teams... Linux distros I guess.. :) But it's intentional. We are literally told in school to compete and compare with eachother, and society keeps on telling us the same shit all our lives, that we need to buy or use highly marketed items to get higher social status. Makes us great consumers though, good for company profits. :)
average arch user behavior
Least cringe arch user:
Imagine using Arch, I use Ubuntu myself. ...another perspective....
I use Ubuntu BTW.
Omg wow, youre so cool....
And stickers. Too bad they don't do that anymore.
Wish I still had mine.
I LOVED MANDRAKE! I was in school at the time so I had free broadband and was able to distrohop. I kept coming back to Mandrake.
I didn't really do much more than get my feet wet with it, but I did learn about dual-booting and open source software and I'm now an avid Linux user on the server side of things---I still prefer Windows for every day desktop stuff. But yeah, Mandrake got me started all those years ago.
My step brothers are hard core Mac people and they used to make fun of me with my “home made Mac-drake box.” I still daily drive Windows but I always have a distro on dual boot so I don’t feel like a total old guy and sell out. Lol.
Mandrake was my First Linux distro :') good memories
Similarly, this person paid for their Google Play account (100$?) and a 1.99$ game, from which 30% go to Google, will take quite some time to recoup. Besides that, there's User support and complains to manage, Google Play moving the post and rules all the time or requiring more from your apps, and sorts of bureaucracy from having Google Play apps. I doubt this person is getting rich from this game.
The Google dev account is I think $20, but this is iOS so you're right about the fee.
I paid $25 in 2021 to be a Google app dev
Because they can. Just because something is open source, doesn’t mean that you can’t charge money for it. But it ultimately depends on the license, though.
As Richard Stallman said, it's "free as in freedom, not free as in free beer". The GPL does not prohibit charging money for distribution of software, it prohibits restrictions on the freedom to change the software and the freedom to have access to the source code.
I always heard it as "Free as in speech, not free as in beer".
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It’s so annoying that there isn’t a word for that in English. Many other languages have it. Swedish for example: fri - “free as in speech”, gratis - “free as in free beer, eg. no cost”.
There is a word for it. Liberty. Libre software is just that. Doesn't have the same ring as freedom though.
Freedom usually doesn't refer to things being free of charge either. And libre is not a word outside of the open source context.
that's exactly what makes "libre" the best loanword to use. If someone goes what's that you go straight into what it *is* rather than what it isn't (I hate that free as in freedom line)
Yes that's my point. Freedom is the noun, free is the adjective that does also mean free of charge. Liberty is the noun but doesnt have an adjective form thus you can use whatever (eg libre)
>doesnt have an adjective form As it turns out, there is no word for it.
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But "fri surf" isn't "gratis surf", though, because you're paying for it.
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Most plans have a GB limit, though. They have limits. “Unlimited surf” is a another word for “fri surf”. But you will never find something that is “fri” and free of cost. Also, in the past they would absolutely limit what websites you could visit. It wasn’t until EU made network neutrality into law that stopped.
in german, some things you do are "umsonst", but not all of them are "kostenlos" :-D
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Gratis is a word in English. It's a bit legalese, but most people have heard it
kinda like "free as in free speech" not "granted as in free beer"
I'm assuming it has to be open source, but the signing key doesn't have to be right? Can't think of a license that would require that.
Actually it does not depend on the license. By definition, FLOSS must include the right to commercialize.
I mean don’t get me wrong. I love the game and I’m willing to pay $1.99 to play it on my phone wherever I want, but something about it feels off.
It might not seem right to you, but that’s the way it is with open source. I assume it’s under some GPL or MIT license? In that case you can go ahead and compile the code yourself and offer it for free to the world, if you want. Nobody is stopping you.
Ok. Fair point. I apologize for my lack of knowledge on this, and I appreciate you explaining it to me. Honestly, looks like this person has added extras to make it a better port and again, I’m totally willing to pay for that to play one of my favorite games on my phone.
It's probably at least partly to support the guy and compensate him for the cost it takes to put it on the App Store. The Android version is freely available through sideloading but costs money on the Play Store which indicates that. Since there's no sideloading on iOS, there's no free version of it on iOS.
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I know about AltStore, I just didn't want to go too much into detail. The point was that putting stuff on the App Store costs money and that's why the app costs money.
Got it, iOS is closed source trash that they charge you out the ass for. Thanks for clarifying.
Go collect them fishes homie
There's a fundamental difference between source code and its license, and binaries of source code. See, the game publisher is publishing a binary of the game. It certainly was not easy to get the game and port it to Android, compile, package, and publish. If the binary generated does contain certain changes to the game, then the GPL license can be enforced to ensure that those changes are also made public upon request, but this doesn't change the fact that a binary has been published and it is not free of charge.
That looks like the iOS App Store, which puts up some major obstacles to compiling code yourself. You need the iOS SDK in Xcode, which is macOS-only. You might even need a developer license for $99/year, but I think you can avoid that if you are willing to re-sign your app every 2 weeks. So this is a case where the binary is worth more than a little compute and a little download.
Developer account is required for app store publishing. $99USD/year
Indeed.
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The reason it doesn't usually make sense to charge for someone else's open source project is not that it's against any license, but because anyone else is free to provide the same thing for free, so unless you're selling to someone that doesn't know this, or the price is low enough that people are merely paying for the convenience of it being prepackaged for their needs, it's not competitive. Note: If this person has extended this game with their own additions, if it's gpl software those additions will also be open source.
free != Free and Free != free
The better question would be, where does the 1.99$ go?
To the publisher (Dmitry Rodin) and Apple.
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Open source also allows it. You are thinking of non-open licenses that only gives you limited rights to look at the source code but without an open license. https://opensource.org/osd/
Incorrect. Just as the commercialization of software is a requirement for free software license to be fsf approved, it’s also a requirement for an open source license to be osi approved. > Free Distribution. The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale. https://opensource.org/osd/ Otherwise, it’s neither open source nor free software. Might be source available, but that’s still proprietary software.
Oh my bad, I have indeed always taken "open source" to mean "source available" without questioning it :/
Fuck the fsf and gnu. That’s what THEIR definition of free/open source software is, but it clearly makes no sense at all. Almost all licenses provide limitations to how one can use the code, a commercial or military or something limitation is NOT a reason to call the software proprietary.
Excuse me? This is the Open Source Definition by the Open Source Initiative. If that’s what you think, take it up to them. I’m sure they’d be willing to change the OSD just for you…
> Nobody is stopping you. Except apple, who makes it impossible to compile iOS apps unless you buy one of their shobby overpriced computers :(
to be accurate, if a bit pedantic, they don’t stop various hackery you can do to emulate macos/xcode/whatever without their computer. They just don’t care to *help* you with that either. Same thing happening with asahi linux. They’re not stopping anyone from getting linux working on the M chips, but the company is not officially doing anything to help either, even though there are contributions from apple engineers.
> even though there are contributions from apple engineers I haven't heard about this. Could you provide examples of Apple engineers contributing to Asahi Linux?
it looks like the original twitter thread is gone but I came across this awhile back https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29591578
I've heard about this before. This isn't Apple engineers contributing _directly_ to Asahi, though.
If that's the case, then that might be part of the reason the publisher is charging for it. It cost them money to get it on iOS, and now they are charging money for it.
I've seen other open source projects being sold for money too on the app store. Not only do you need apple hardware, but there's also a 100$/yr fee apple charges for the privilege of being a developer. I can fully understand why devs are charging money like this
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However, a Hackintosh does violate the EULA/ToS of MacOS. Running afoul of that agreement is a great way to get any app pulled and your dev account blacklisted.
> you can go ahead and compile the code yourself and offer it for free to the world, if you want. You need to have a Mac and pay $100/year developer fee to Apple though.
>you can go ahead and compile the code yourself and offer it for free to the world, if you want Or even charge for it!
imagine paying for a mobile game
let's check them, the game itself it GPLv2, they must provide you a link to the source of the game *that compiles that version of the game.* Remember, a GPL-licence work can't be re-licenced unless by the original author. I'm curious to see if they're in compliance. If they aren't, report them to the Free Software Foundation!
In this case the original copyright holder is a long defunct company, and this is a fork which has other copyright holders. The FSF cannot do anything, other than maybe help the copyright holders sue if it is a violation. It would be more useful to contact the development team, but i cannot see any obvious way to do so: https://sourceforge.net/projects/extremetuxracer/
I’m 90% sure you’re right. But I also could’ve sworn that I read something up about how you can take legal action against GPL violations even if you don’t own the copyright. I’ll update if I find anything. Edit: [https://web.archive.org/web/20110127140245/http://www.lokkju.com/blog/archives/91](https://web.archive.org/web/20110127140245/http://www.lokkju.com/blog/archives/91)
It seems it's not possible that they are compliant (or maybe it -was- not, in 2010?). From the horse's mouth (or gnu mouth), about another GPLv2 software (GnuGo): https://www.fsf.org/news/2010-05-app-store-compliance >The primary problem is that Apple imposes numerous legal restrictions on use and distribution of GNU Go through the iTunes Store Terms of Service, which is forbidden by section 6 of GPLv2.
Huh, I was unaware that Apple imposed such restrictions! That's asinine in the extreme!
Yes, without paying for the app I am very curious if it mentions the license anywhere. The App Store page for it does not.
That's impossible when it's on the apple app store. Since apple always adds apple specific non free code to any software. That's why not a single GPL licensed software is on the app store. Either it's dual licensed by the original authors, or it's a GPL violation. So (unless it's the original author, which I really doubt) you can be sure its a license violation. Probably someone just tries do make some quick money of other peoples work.
> That's impossible when it's on the apple app store. Since apple always adds apple specific non free code to any software. Source? I tried to find something with Google "apple app store adds code to app", but I didn't find anything. > That's why not a single GPL licensed software is on the app store. Look for Mindustry. It's GPLv3 licensed and on the app store. Edit: Seems like this is the source https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl-enforcement Edit2: After reading through the source, your statement about Apple adding non-free code to software just seems wrong. Even GNU Go would be on the App store if there weren't these other more legal limitations that Apple imposes.
> Source? I read this some time ago. My first google result was this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5784169/does-apple-modify-ios-application-executables-on-apps-submitted-to-the-app-store So maybe they don't add code, but they definetly modify uploaded binaries, which is also not gpl3 compatible (unless the the modifications are reprodusable) https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/898/how-does-gpl-affect-binary-only-modifications
You do realize that the publisher has to pay Apple to upload his apps to their store, right?
Usually, it goes like this for paid OSS: - if the software is GPL, you are paying for the convenience of not having to compile it yourself - if the software is MIT, you could pay for the above as well, but it is also possible that you are paying for a closed source fork which may or may not have added features
You could make your own version and sell it for $1! That’s the real difference (assuming they haven’t violated the license in some way)
If this is a dev then it's totally reasonable for them to charge for it. Many open source applications use a similar model, especially on mobile - one model I've seen a few times is providing it for free on f-droid (although anyone else could do the same even if the dev didn't) and charging for it on the play store. If this isn't a dev and they've done nothing to the code then they can still legally do this (unless the play store terms prohibit it or the name tux racer is trademarked; you might struggle to argue it's passing off as it's the same product), because that's how (most, if not all) open-source licences work. But it would be a scumbag move to sell an open-source product on a digital platform when you have nothing to do with it.
The screenshot in the original post is of the iOS App Store, so no side loading sadly (without going through hoops). Since you need both a Mac (or rather, macOS) and a $99/yr developer account to compile and publish to the App Store, it seems reasonable to charge a fee for the game.
You paying for legal porting of it on ... it's an iPhone' store, yes?
Yes, it’s an iPhone/iOS app, and happy to pay for the porting and additions if it’s not a GPL violation.
Make ur own version lol
Developers github repo: https://github.com/drodin/extremetuxracer
This needs to be much higher. It would be nice if the page on the App Store mentioned the repo and the license, but it is still good to see he is sharing the changes (and he is only required to share changes to people who purchased it).
>and he is only required to share changes to people who ~~purchased it~~ **he distributed it to** Technical difference, as he also need to share the change to those he is giving free copies to (if any)
It mentions and links to it on the Play store. Would be great to see this in F-Droid.
I downloaded the APK from the author's website. This port uses gryo controls, it feels weird and fun to play this game with them.
Open source Is free as in Freedom, we are not talking about Money.
Also good information I hadn’t considered. Thank you.
Btw re Reading now my response It sounds rude, Sorry XD
No worries! I didn’t take it negatively.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html
Another way of saying it is "free as in speech, not as in beer"
Small but significant correction: _open source_ does not imply nor guarantee any freedoms. A book is open source but does not come with freedom of redistribution. Code is similar. By default, code falls under strict copyright. Making it available for anyone to see does not change that and does not permit readers from copying it. The freedoms people think of with “open source” come from the license people distribute their code with. Common free-as-in-freedom code is distributed under licenses like the GPL, MIT or Apache licenses. Each have their own set of actions a user of the software is permitted or forbidden of soon with the software and its source code. More information about this can be found on the [choosealicense website][1] [1]: https://choosealicense.com/no-permission/
If they took the time to port the game to iOS and pay Apple to publish it in the app store I don't see how this is outrageous. If the game is GPL licensed though, they have to release the modifications they made to the source code, so if you really don't want to pay you could set up a dev environment, compile it yourself and install it to your device for free (or whatever Apple charges for the dev environment idk)
Happy to pay for it, just didn’t understand if it was ok. Not looking to hurt the community in anyway, so thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask. 😀. Thanks for the thoughts and info on how the process they had to go through would likely discourage someone from just randomly doing it.
Developing for iOS kind of really sucks, so it's not uncommon for open source apps to cost money there. Not only is it a pain to actually develop and publish anything on iOS in the first place, but Apple's Terms of Service is also very stupid about GPLed code, which makes it even more annoying to publish any kind of FOSS on iOS. Blink Shell, which is arguably the best iOS SSH client, costs $20 in spite of being open source. $2 for a game like this with no ads seems entirely fair. Back in the day XChat (the IRC client) used to ask money for official Windows binaries because the developer did not like compiling it on Windows. Nothing stopped anyone from compiling it themselves nor from distributing their own binaries, though, so there were 3rd party Windows builds available at no cost.
Same happens today. Krita on Linux is free but it's paid under Microsoft store. Ardour is free on Linux because people take the time to build it, but it's paid on windows as well
>Same happens today. Krita on Linux is free but it's paid under Microsoft store. No, that's just because it helps fund the developers. Krita developers also offer free downloads for Windows on their website
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Yes. But krita on Ms store is payed. Pretty sure I've wrote that on the original comment.
from their website it is free similar to support the devs.
Problem with Krita is that they conveniently adjusted the app description to "hide" the information that it's actually free to download: * Home Page: Krita is a professional FREE and open source painting program. (...) * MS Store: Krita is a full-featured digital painting application (...) * Steam: Krita is a powerful, open source and community-driven (...)
Oh so problematic, how dare they /s
I'm 99% sure that saying "it is free" on a page asking to pay would be a TOS violation, accusating of bringing searches for "free" and scamming people a rembursed download or something like that.
Cool. Very complete answer. I hope you get the most upvotes because I think this is the most complete answer.
It cost money to have an Apple Developer Program Account. So free apps on the App Store needs some way of recovering that investment, either with ads or with a one-time price. The price for a year to have the "privilege" to publish apps on the App Store is 99 USD. EDIT: Link removed, wrong tux racer - apologies.
>The price for a year to have the "privilege" to publish apps on the App Store is 99 USD. That's so fucking stupid. On google play store it's 15 bucks *once*. How do they expect developers to publish cool free of charge apps when they make it so prohibitively expensive?
I would guess the vast majority of app purchases are from a tiny minority of developers, but everyone thinks they're going to be in that tiny minority. Apple is simply monetizing the vast majority as well. Modern capitalism in a nutshell.
> How do they expect developers to publish cool free of charge apps Why do you think Apple wants users with expectations that a small addition could be free? The whole point of Apple is basically to pay extra for "premium" service.
You can fork the project on the repo and deploy it locally FOR FREE. If you want to use the store, that has a cost.
Being Open Source or even Free Software doesn't mean you can't charge for it. There are some licenses that prevent commercial use, but the main FLOSS licenses don't prohibit it. They're still required to provide the source code for it and you can build it yourself, but they're not required to give it away for free, even if there is another place you can get it for free. If you want, you can even build it yourself and sell it too or give it away, provided you also provide the source code.
In fact a license that limits commerical sales is inherently not free or open source, because it limits how the work can be used.
As others have noted, it's completely reasonable to charge for it. Although you might be unaware that chances are many of the devices you use everyday contain GPL licensed software that are part of a paid product.. for example Android phones, many routers, even Windows itself contains both BSD & GPL licensed components! Also, just my additional controversial opinion: More open source software _should_ cost money, that way the quality, support & polish would improve, and it'd also potentially entice more firms to supporting Linux (e.g. Adobe).
Open source, pay for resource
For starters I'm not sure there's anything in the license that says they can't, and also they're maintaining their own mobile forks of open source games. https://drodin.com/ You're just paying for the app store access to those games, and also maybe supporting the dev who spent time porting them to mobile. The drodin website has links to every source port they've made for IOS and Android, so they're following the terms of the GPL license. edit: It seems to me that this dev also basically had to maintain their own mac branch of Extreme Tux Racer, which probably means getting the game to work in the ios supported version of OpenGL. If at any point OpenGL was dropped in IOS, I assume this dev would also have to make a metal fork of the graphics, or get an openGL shim.
In fairness, this developer is maintaining their own fork and seems to have put significant effort into the Apple and Android ports... They haven't just downloaded and built an existing project and uploaded it to the app stores. It's [here on Github](https://github.com/drodin/extremetuxracer)...
Because the license permits distribution and commercial use. Open source means people can do whatever they want with it within the stipulations of the license.
As explained by others, it's totally legal to do this. Be careful though before buying, try to make sure your money goes to the team behind the project and not some random dude whose only glory was to open a Play Store account...
Because Apple registration costs money.
Why not? The "free" refers to freedom, not price and you are encouraged to sell your software: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html
libre nor gratis
This is going to be the first game that I'm gonna install from Open Store on Ubuntu Touch after Xiaomi lets me unlock the bootloader
is the game open source? noone's forcing you to pay then. you could download the code and run it yourself :) This way you just support the project 👍
Here is the link [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/extreme-tux-racer/id1522259097](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/extreme-tux-racer/id1522259097) Where is the GPL code?
https://github.com/drodin/extremetuxracer
I don't see a problem then.
Pedantically, you have no right to access the code until the game gets *distributed* to you (aka purchased) They have a public repo in this case, but it's more convenience/goodwill than a legal obligation besides for actual players
There's a program call aesprite (for drawing art). Its open source. But people still pay 20ish dollars for it. And after compiling it I can understand why. Its definitely a pain.
Under the GPL, you can charge for binaries. You can also not release your build scripts to make the binary. So long as the actual executing code is open sourced. This is also how Elementary OS in the beta days for 6(?) was charging for precompiled beta ISOs. But you could still build the beta ISO yourself from source.
Free as in Freedom, not as in price. There is nothing wrong with paying for free software, and you should to support the devs.
free as in freedom, not as in beer. Nothing says you cant charge for open source software, look at redhat https://www.redhat.com/en/store/linux-platforms
It's libre (little or no restrictions) NOT gartis (no monetary cost)
You can download the APK directly from GitHub: https://github.com/drodin/extremetuxracer
In this case. They have to put in effort to compile the program to run on iOS. Apple also charges fees for developers to be able to host an app in the first place. Supposedly this is so that they can review every app on the store, but I doubt they actually do that. So the developer needs a source of revenue in order to keep up with just the fees, not yet accounting for the time spent making it work on a different platform.
apple
Why wouldn't they be able to change money for it? Are you that clueless about how open source software works? They just have to release the source to any changes they made.
*May* have to release the source. GPL requires this, but BSD licenses don't, and both are free/open source licenses.
Depends on licence
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Does anyone read the TOS to find out how much data they are going to mine off of people who install this "free" game?
This was having to the game vampire survivors as well. People were stealing assets, and mechanics of the game that forced Poncle to release vampire survivors on mobile earlier than intended. People do this, they steal assets and then sell it
Assuming it’s not stolen and the original devs are the ones that posted it to App Store. It’s not unusual for them to do this to bring a small amount of profit and also pay apples yearly developer fee. I know Anki charges for an iPhone app while the desktop one is free. Lots of free flash and web games have their iPhone version paid. Idk I am not against it if there are no ads and it supports the original devs.
Because it's iPhone. A lot of apps are under a paywall because there's a hard way to install .ipa file from your browser. It's not android that you can get whatever app its not in PlayStore. This is off-topic and a little rant about devs on iOS. But someone can though from the circumstances explained in other comments.
One of the main requirements for something to be open source as defined by osi or free software as defined by fsf is the commercialization of software. If a software license has a non-commercial clause or similar, it’s neither open source nor free software. It’d basically be proprietary software at this point with source available. Edit: Ignoring all that, you can’t legally distribute programs on the apple store without violating GPL (which this game is licensed under) unless you’re the copyright owner (then you can do whatever you like). This is regardless of the price tag. Edit 2: To the blind downvoters, here’s the source: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl-enforcement
This is not correct. Gpl software is fine on Apple Store.
It literally isn’t if you're not the copyright holder/author and can't dual license. You’re going to argue with the license creators? Apple embeds some stuff to published apps on their store. They’re proprietary and therefore a GPL violation. [https://www.fsf.org/news/2010-05-app-store-compliance](https://www.fsf.org/news/2010-05-app-store-compliance) Edit: This was the update [https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl-enforcement](https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/more-about-the-app-store-gpl-enforcement) You literally have to agree to terms that are conflicting with GPL >That's the problem in a nutshell: Apple's Terms of Service impose restrictive limits on use and distribution for any software distributed through the App Store, and the GPL doesn't allow that. This specific case involves other issues, but this is the one that's most unique and deserves explanation.
That's a bullshit academic argument that makes no sense and no one actually cares about. You can build the same app from the source and publish it on the App Store. Also your link doesn't support your statement. The FSF doesn't like the app store's TOS, that's their entire argument in the link you posted.
Who exactly do you mean by that? The copyright holders, the distributors, apple? Unless you use a dual license solution (you need to be the author), you’d be violating gpl. https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/59495 So far, you’re just saying “it’s allowed” and “no one cares.” Ignoring that your statements are contradictory, they’re baseless and it sounds like you’re making stuff up. You need to cite sources for you claims. Edit: Wow, that’s actually petty. Instead of admitting you’re wrong, you block me to avoid hurting your ego. But to reply to your last comment. > I mean no one. Literally no one cares about this idiotic argument. This is like the equivalent of saying “who asked,” doesn’t contribute anything to the argument except avoid it by making you somehow feel better. Nonetheless, you forgot that a court would *also* not care whether you cared or not if you broke the license 🤷. Finally, you’re even wrong about that as there are already plenty of GPL programs on the apple store, and the authors have to use other licensing for it. For example, https://github.com/keepassium/KeePassium#license > So far you’ve cited an fsf article that doesn’t say what you say it does and makes no coherent or accurate argument at all, from twelve years ago. now you’re citing stackexchange? what next, Wikipedia? Again, completely avoiding the argument for no reason other than to protect your ego. The legalities on GPL software on the apple store have long been discussed numerous times before. I don’t see how it’s invalid just because an amount of time has passed without an actual change of events. All you keep saying is that it’s an “idiotic argument” when you yourself don’t provide one to begin with. Instead of trying to refute the arguments you fixate on where they’re from, which does nothing to help your argument.
I mean no one. Literally no one cares about this idiotic argument. So far you’ve cited an fsf article that doesn’t say what you say it does and makes no coherent or accurate argument at all, from twelve years ago. now you’re citing stackexchange? what next, Wikipedia?
u/MoistyWiener is wrong. u/josh2751 is right. Case closed.
Very constructive. Thank you for your input. Seriously though, would you please enlighten me more? That’s how ios developers of gpl programs already operate. https://github.com/keepassium/KeePassium#license
>would you please enlighten me more? no
Cuz it's Apple™, of course
Direct debit?
It's legal to do so and up to individuals to be savvy enough to not pay for something if they can avoid it.
True *free* and open-source means that you are *free* to do whatever you want with it, including selling the product. Just look at all of the paid open source software on the Windows Store
The game “snow ski game” seems similar and is free!
Well, you can always download the source and install it. They do provide their source code.
Redistribution is legal for free software (GPL), price isn’t a factor either
usually, if an open source dev releases something in an app store, they will charge money that will act as a donation.
Because free software in the context of FOSS means libre, not gratis. As long as they're publishing the code require by the license (if applicable) they can charge you whatever they want.
That's because it's "free" as in "freedom", not as in "free beer". That means that you can redistribute the game, and even charge people for it
Freedom != Free beer
It costs 99$ a year to have an apple developer account. That maybe part of the problem. Just my guess.
To maintain servers? And user data like signal(which is open source chatting app) they collect donations from users
Same in google play store but atleast he has a link to the github which has the free apk in it
You're still completely free to go download and compile the code from source. Good luck running it on your iPhone without a developer account or jailbreaking though.