Most open source devs are already out of luck as GPLed code (the most popular open source license used in over 50% of open source apps) is incompatible with the iOS and Mac App Stores. Most consumers don't care as long as they get to play angry birds.

Apple is making record profits ($35 billion last quarter) and only 14.2% of those profits ($1.287 billion) came from sales of Mac hardware last quarter (all desktops and laptops). (source) The percentage of money Apple makes from desktops and laptops is getting progressively smaller each quarter. And the number of 'professionals' in those numbers is smaller still. The bottom line is that there is FAR more money to be made from consumers. To the point that professionals really don't matter to Apple's bottom line at all. Consumers, consumers, consumers. Consumers consuming music/video ($1.571 billion, up 29 percent from $1.571 billion a year earlier.) and apps ($891 million, up 28 percent from $696 million a year earlier.) on their iPads ($9.17 billion, up 52 percent from $6.046 billion a year earlier.), iPod Touches ($1.06 billion, down 20 percent from $1.325 billion a year earlier.) and iPhones ($16.425 billion, up 22 percent from $13.31 billion a year earlier.). That's where the money is. That's where nearly ALL the money is. Microsoft is seeing the same light. That's why Windows 8 is what it is. It is a 100% consumer operating system, corporations be damned. It's about setting up an ecosystem of apps, music and video across your desktop, laptop, tablet and phone. So, no, it doesn't matter if you can't install Eclipse, Mac Ports or various command-line tools on your Mac. The Mac App Store is about consumers, just like the iOS App Store. Not creators or 'professionals'. Even if you estimate that 10% of Mac's desktop/laptop hardware sales were 'professionals' (an extremely high estimate) and every single one of them abandoned Mac as a result of these changes (unlikely), that's still only $493 million. 1.4% of Apple's revenue. And that will be more than offset by another platform where Apple for all intents and purposes controls the keys to the kingdom (Mac App Store will be 95%+ of all Mac software sales in the next couple years) and makes a 30% cut of all software sales. They can ditch professionals and make a killing on consumers.

He can if he so chooses. And when he accepts contributions from others, he can ask that they sign a joint copyright assignment (ala OpenOffice.org pre-Oracle/Apache) so that he can include those in the app store version. Or he may choose to go GPL only and not pay the Apple tax, meaning no iOS version at all, and an Apple version that users will have to tick the box allowing non-Apple signed apps to run.

The next Mac OS release will block any software not signed with an Apple-approved digital certificate by default. Advanced users can go into options and untick the option. This is seen as the next step to an iOS-style lockdown of the whole OS. The first being the release of the app store (with some preferential placements of apps installed via said app store). The next step, in Mountain Lion, making it so all developers have to go through apple, pay a yearly Apple developer fee, and be approved through some process before their software is allowed to be installed by default. Likely, a later release will require app store software only by default with an advanced option to disable that.

If you'd like to go all out, you can try something like Eclipse Portable which is available in the C/C++, Java, etc variants. It's technically labeled as a Development Test but it's 'stable' and being added to the main app directory shortly. There's also a test of BlueJ Portable available which is geared towards learning. If you'd like to just try something smaller, you can always start with something like SWI-Prolog Portable. There are a number of text editors available in the Development section of the Portable App Directory a few of which can kick off compilation right in MinGW Portable for you. And, if you're so inclined, you can help out test and code some of the apps requested or tested out in the Development forums or section of the PortableApps.com site. If there's anything else that would help out budding programmers, please just let us know!

Only Opera Mini, which is a kind of pseudo-browser that offloads rendering to a server-farm in the cloud. It's designed for dumb phones (not smartphones) but was the only way to get a 'kinda of' browser around Apple's 'only Safari can interpret Javascript on the phone' restrictions.

There is a big difference between liking something on Facebook and being asked to fabricate a review of a piece of software. Liking something on Facebook is basically just you spreading the word to your friends and adding to the total number of 'likes' on Facebook. You're not doing something unseemly. If they were asking you to review it or give it a 5 star rating or something, that's an entirely different story.

As the licensing terms Apple chose to use deny access to the app store for over 50% of open source software worldwide by including language that attempts to place restrictions on software above and beyond what the contributors intend, there's really no other conclusion to come to. Apple and their lawyers know the GPL very well and were well aware of what they were doing. As to their intentions, I won't hazard a guess, but Apple's intentions are seldom honorable.

The licensing for these open source was done years ago. Two decades at this point in the case of the GPLv2, the world's most popular software license... well before iOS even existed. Apple designed their licensing for the iOS and Mac App Stores so that they are incompatible with said license. That's their own fault. So, even though a couple VLC devs tried to put it in the store, they didn't get the permission of all the copyright holders to violate the terms of the GPL and do so. Thus, those devs and Apple themselves violated the GPL.

As the iOS and Mac App Stores have restrictive licensing terms and are setup in a way which are incompatible with the GPL and LGPL. And as the GPL and LGPL represent the majority of open source software (about 57% combined). Yes, Apple does indeed restriuct open source apps from their app store.

Right, and they RELEASED all the source code that was GPLed as well as all source that was directly linked to it. They did this for Honeycomb. They've ALREADY done this for Ice Cream Sandwich. And they've released the FULL source (GPL, Apache, BSD, etc bits) for Gingerbread, as they will for ICS once phones are released.

This is FUD based on nothing. Google has said for quite some time that Gingerbread was available, that Honeycomb would be closed and only suited for tablets and that Ice Cream Sandwich would have the source available once it was released. Google was true to their word and everything for 2.x is available and 3.x is closed. The post linked to in the main article is the sources they are required to release (GPL) now that the Ice Cream Sandwich SDK is available. It should be noted that Ice Cream Sandwich itself as an OS has not been released and is not available on any shipping product. They've already said "We plan to release the source for the recently-announced Ice Cream Sandwich soon, once it’s available on devices." It's not available on devices yet.

Well, considering the source code to Gingerbread 2.3.4 (what my phone runs) is fully available as Google said it would be, and Google said Android 3.x Honeycomb would be closed as it is, why would you doubt them? Android 4.0 Ice Cream will be open source and the Cyanogen guys will be hacking it into working ROMs for every phone on the market soon after it's released.