Apple Cuts Off Under-18 Darwin Developer

Crispyking writes "Finlay Dobbie has been a leading contributor to the Darwin project, most notably helping track down the infamous PPP-hang bug. He's been nominated to become a Darwin contributor (which comes with limited check-in privileges) but when going through the process, Apple found out he's under 18 years old, and not only refused to let him be a contributor to this 'open source' project, but canceled his Apple Developer Connection membership (which gives him download access to the source code) on the grounds that because he's under 18, he can't be legally bound to the small-print agreement." Update: 03/26 00:26 GMT by P : Finlay wrote in email that he wasn't getting the Darwin source through his ADC account, but through a third party development project, which he resigned from as a result of all the red tape and the ADC account being disabled.

Comments

Cool.....is this like 17 year old drug dealers ?

[CDWert]

Does that mean that next time i want an oracle installation I can benchmark I should have 16 year old install it sho he isnt bound by the terms.

This is STUPID on apples part, this guy showed an affinity and a brightness devoted to apple. They have now alienated him to some degree.

Now that said , if he isnt legally bound by the terms, He could RE-Liscence the code he already wrote and Apple would be forced to remove it.

Thats it lets alienate our developer base.
I asked for certain GPL code, modified by Apple and had a hell of a time getting it (no it wassnt on FTP and per GPL didnt need to be, but I litterally had to talk to their legal dept before getting the code sent to me through the written offer clause)

When Will We Learn!?

[Lethyos]

Apple is NOT open-source friendly! This should be glaringly obvious from MacOS X. The only development Apple did that was original is on the components that they keep closed and proprietary (the API's, Quartz, etc). The parts that are open are the components that were open to start with. It's tantamount to theivery ... considering Apple gives nothing back to the community. They are using keep business sense to get a lot of free development work and they could care less about how we're all affected.

Open source developers: STOP doing work for Apple until they start working for you. If Darwin is such a great platform, fork it and then relicense it to keep it out of Apple's grubby hands. It's not their work to begin with anyway.

So...

[GriffX]

Dobbie must punish hisself, Dobbie must!

Re:About Apple's Policy

[dkh]

The willingness to lie to get that yahoo mail account is part of the problem. It is indicitive of why minor's can not sign contracts (judgement, character, responsibility etc).

Talent and maturity are not linked. And while its not an absolute, maturity and age generally are.

Same thing happened with us on NDAs

[jpellino]

We did external research for Apple, and we had a dozen or so elementary students testing pre-release hardware and software for Apple ATG... they realized the kids couldn't sign a meaningful, binding contract,so we sorta shrugged over it, I read the kids the riot act, made them stand on one leg, raise their right hands, etc... and we all made it through - the lead time to rollout was only about a quarter, so it went OK - but we all held our breath for 90 days. One of the Apple employees on a site visit mentioned that on the flight out, he was seated next to a woman who found out he worked for Apple and was supremely interested in what he did, questioning him incessantly for most of the trip. When they landed, she handed him her business card - an intellectual property lawyer who had recently worked for Apple and decided to see how much of a secret he could keep. She congratulated him on passing with flying colors.