Celestia rip-off hits Mac App Store

[Jugalator]

I'm sad to tell you that I just saw a blatant Celestia rip-off just now when I opened the Mac App Store. I'm sure there's some way to report this stuff to Apple, but I couldn't find out a way right now from a glance.

Here's the app in question anyway: "Cosmic Crawler". I haven't spent money on purchasing it, but I think that the UI and feature set alone clearly tells that this is in reality - Celestia.

Registered developer is: Michael Latour
Registered Copyright is: © 2011 iCoder
The support site link directs you here: http://icoder.ca/index.php?option=com_rsform&Itemid=90

[ajtribick]

Do you want to pay for stuff you can legitimately get for free? There's an app for that!

I have sent an email to the app store customer support. On the other hand I am not a Mac user so not entirely sure how far this will get...

[Guckytos]

Hm,

Celestia is under the GNU License, isn't it? I'm not into this license stuff, but my basic understanding was:

It is allowed to make a version that people have to pay for.
But, anybody making his own version of Celestia would have to include the original code with it.
And he would also have to put his version under the GPL
If he does not, he violates the GPL.

Or am I completely wrong here?

BTW: What is Apples position to GNU licensed software on the MacStore?

Regards,

Guckytos

[selden]

Someone with a Mac will have to download and review the software for compliance with the Gnu license.

As best I can tell, the Mac App Store doesn't explicitly object to open-source software, but one of their requirements seems to be

3. Metadata (name, descriptions, ratings, rankings, etc)

3.1

Apps with metadata that mentions the name of any other computer platform will be [rejected.]

This might be enough to forbid an unmodified version of Celestia, since its documentation explicitly mentions Windows and Linux.

I found this at http://www.tequilabomb.com/shotglass/20 ... es-leaked/
I don't know how accurate it is. Only someone with a Mac Developer account can see Apple's official Review Guidelines for Mac OS X apps. They're at
http://developer.apple.com/appstore/mac ... lines.html

[RVL]

Apple hasn't banned the app . The "author" has been forced to change the icon (that one was very much like the icon of the Starmap Pro planetarium for iOS).
I think the Celestia team needs to bulid its own version for Mac App Store.