Open source in AIFCC

AIFCC is a proprietary Mac app. The Linux desktop it runs is open-source software that we distribute to every buyer. That comes with real obligations. This page states what we ship, what we owe you for it, what we have done, and the one part of it that is genuinely unresolved.

Last updated: 1 August 2026

What is actually in the app

The app bundle contains a compressed ARM64 Linux disk image, built from Ubuntu 24.04 packages: the Linux kernel, the GNU userland, glibc, the XFCE desktop, LightDM, Chromium, kitty, Python, Node, and roughly fifteen hundred other packages, under the GPL, LGPL, BSD, MIT, Apache and other licenses. Apple's CDN delivers that image to you along with our app.

The Swift app itself links nothing but Apple's own frameworks - Virtualization, AppKit, SwiftUI, StoreKit. It contains no QEMU, no UTM, no GPL library, statically or dynamically. Our release script runs otool -L over the built bundle and fails the release if anything outside Apple's frameworks and our own payload is linked, so this is a checked fact rather than a claim.

The app and the image are separate works that travel together, which is the "mere aggregation" the GPL describes (GPLv2 section 2, GPLv3 section 5). Running a program is not deriving from it - the app boots the Linux image the way any operating system launches any program. So the app stays proprietary, and the obligations attach to the image we distribute. We meet them for the image.

Getting the source

Every released build has a published manifest of the exact packages and versions inside its image, plus a script that fetches the corresponding source for those exact versions from the distribution's snapshot archive:

github.com/franzenzenhofer/aifcc-guest-source

git clone https://github.com/franzenzenhofer/aifcc-guest-source
cd aifcc-guest-source
./fetch-sources.sh manifests/<build>.tsv

The same repository publishes the scripts we use to build the image, so you can read exactly what we add to, configure in, and strip out of the stock system. We are not obliged to publish those - they are our own code - but "here is the entire delta" is a better answer than "trust us".

The image itself also carries its own inventory and directions, at /usr/share/doc/aifcc/MANIFEST.tsv and /usr/share/doc/aifcc/SOURCES.md. Those directions are given in satisfaction of GPLv3 section 6(d). A written offer, valid for at least three years from your receipt of the app, stands in addition to them; the contact is in the Third-Party Notices.

We had this wrong, and fixed it

Our earliest image was built by stripping the base system down, and that strip removed /usr/share/doc/*/copyright and /usr/share/common-licenses/ - the per-package copyright notices and the verbatim license texts. GPLv2 section 1 and GPLv3 section 4 require those notices to travel with every copy. Publishing a nice compliance document does not cure a notice that is missing from the thing you actually shipped.

The image build now restores them, keeps a dpkg rule that stops any future package operation from stripping them again, and the build is gated: our golden image cannot be blessed for release if a single installed package lacks its copyright file, or if the GPL-2, GPL-3 and LGPL-2.1 texts are not present. That gate is the fix. The document was never the fix.

The App Store problem, stated plainly

The objection

GPLv2 section 6 and GPLv3 section 10 say a distributor may not impose further restrictions on the rights the license grants. Apple's Licensed Application End User License Agreement does impose terms of that kind. This is the argument that led VLC to be pulled from the iOS App Store in 2011, and it applies to any GPL payload conveyed through an app store, including ours.

We cannot make Apple's terms go away, and we are not going to pretend the objection is frivolous. It is the strongest thing anyone can say about this app, so we would rather say it first.

What we actually do about it:

  1. A direct grant that overrides the store's terms. Our Terms of Use now grant you the rights to the image's open-source components directly and irrevocably. Where any distribution channel's term - including any app store's - would restrict what the GPL or LGPL permits you to do with those components, that restriction does not apply to them and our direct grant governs instead. We impose no further restriction of our own.
  2. A copy free of any store's terms. Ask us and we will give you the identical Linux image outside the App Store, with no store terms attached, so your GPL rights never depend on Apple's channel.
  3. No tivoization. You have root in the VM. You can modify, rebuild or replace any component in it, and nothing in the app verifies or restricts what runs inside the guest. GPLv3 section 6's installation-information requirement exists to prevent exactly the lock-in we do not do.
  4. A commitment in writing. If you hold copyright in a component of this image and believe we have failed an obligation, write to us. We will work with you to fix it, and if we cannot, we will remove your component or withdraw the affected build. That is not a formality; it is the outcome we accept in advance.

If it ever comes to it, the image can be distributed by us rather than by Apple. We have not done that by default because Apple's review guidelines forbid an app downloading resources that change what was reviewed, and because a four-gigabyte first-run download is a worse product. It remains available as a remedy, not as a plan.

Trademarks

The image is built from Ubuntu, and we modify it, so it is a remix rather than stock Ubuntu. Canonical's branding does not ship: the logo, plymouth theme and default wallpaper are removed at build time, the login banner is ours, and the build gate refuses an image that carries them. Functional identification stays - /etc/os-release, the apt sources and package metadata - because apt and thousands of package scripts read it, and because naming the base system is exactly the nominative use that is permitted.

AIFCC is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Canonical Ltd., and we never call the product "Ubuntu". Product names and trademarks belong to their respective owners.

Summary