The definition of 'noncommercial' is a real mess. Even major 'free' browsers are commercial -- as they come from giant for-profit companies (Microsoft, Google) who ultimately hope to collect profits elsewhere due to their 'free' browser distribution. Do IE and Chrome violate the NYTimes license when they view NYTimes RSS feeds?
Yes, absolutely. As do ISPs. If I buy internet access, and use that access to read the NYT online, then my ISP is making a profit from the NYT's content without paying them. Ditto the companies that made my computers and all their components -- the NYT should sue them all!
The point is not that they allow the viewing of the NYT RSS feed, but that they ship with it by default, and use it as a selling point for their application. I don't agree with NYT's viewpoint here, but I can see where they are coming from. I think the Wired article went a bit over the top in saying that any piece of commercial software is disallowed from displaying NYT content.
If the NYTimes complaint had been narrowly focused on the display of NYTimes content in promotional images/text, or even its default inclusion, I'd have more sympathy.
Instead, the claim they're making suggests it's wrong for the app to display NYTimes content, even at the direction/configuration of the end-user. That's a problematic argument for the whole stack of 'commercial' tools used to read the NYTimes, from the computer and OS through the mobile data provider/ISP up through the browser and feed-reader apps.
