Apple pulled the popular VLC media player from its App Store because of a dispute over licensing issues.

[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]VLC is released under the General Public License, which apparently conflicts with Apple’s App Store license that requires app digital rights management. Apple was informed of the issue by VLC’s Rémi Denis-Courmont.

“On January 7th, Apple removed VLC media player from its application store for iDevices,” wrote Denis-Courmont on the VLC Web site. “Thus the incompatibility between the GNU General Public License and the AppStore terms of use is resolved – the hard way. This end should not have come to a surprise to anyone, given the precedents.”

It seems clear, given the nature of the disagreement, VLC will not return to the App Store.