You write that Apple "granted permission" to the maker of Franklin and then yanked it. That's simply not true. Not even close.
In Apple Computer, Inc. v. Franklin Computer Corp., the 3rd Circuit found that Franklin did so without any permission from Apple, but Franklin's logic was that you can't copyright something software isn't written down on paper. They copied ROMs that had no equivalent for sale on paper, ergo they didn't need to ask permission and Apple couldn't stop them. The circuit court ruled in favor of Franklin, because there was no legal precedent allowing software to be copyrighted, which is how it got bumped up to the circuit court, who ruled for Apple.
Obviously, Apple was right here. Without copyright for software, we'd have no GPL and the open source movement would still be stuck at the "freeware" stage.
Eponysterical!