Developers Take Apple to Court
French open-source software company Nexedi has filed a lawsuit against Apple in Paris. alleging that Apple’s App Store contract is unfair.
In a blog, founder and CEO Jean-Paul Smets and UI designer Sven Franck said the suit is aimed at forcing Apple to improve its support for the latest Web technology in iOS.
At issue is Apple’s requirement that third-party browsers use the open-source WebKit layout engine. Apple has based its Safari browser on WebKit and requires that makers of competing browsers do the same for inclusion in its iOS App Store.
Smets and Franck contend Apple’s rules are unfair. “We would be delighted at Nexedi to create a Web browser for iOS with better HTML5 support, based on a recent version of Blink library, for example,” they wrote in their blog post. “But as soon as we would publish it, it would be banned from Apple’s App Store.”