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Apple Drops Part of iPhone Developer NDA

Posted by timothy on from the squawky-wheel-gets-degreased dept.

ds writes "Apple, this morning, announced they are dropping the iPhone Developer NDA in respect to released software. Previously, iPhone developers were legally bound even after their software had been released." Another reader adds, "Early release software is still covered, but this should bring about increased developer interaction, as well as a slew of iPhone dev books." The complete message about the NDA change can be seen for now at Apple's iPhone Developer site, and is reproduced below. "We have decided to drop the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for released iPhone software. We put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS includes many Apple inventions and innovations that we would like to protect, so that others don't steal our work. It has happened before. While we have filed for hundreds of patents on iPhone technology, the NDA added yet another level of protection. We put it in place as one more way to help protect the iPhone from being ripped off by others. However, the NDA has created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone's success, so we are dropping it for released software. Developers will receive a new agreement without an NDA covering released software within a week or so. Please note that unreleased software and features will remain under NDA until they are released. Thanks to everyone who provided us constructive feedback on this matter."

3 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. Re:So you still cant bitch about being rejected? by Free+the+Cowards · · Score: 5, Informative

    No. The NDA only covers Apple's stuff, it does not and cannot cover yours. (Developers couldn't talk about their stuff, but only because talking about their stuff implied talking about Apple's stuff.)

    When Apple says unreleased software they mean their unreleased software. You can talk about your unreleased software all you want, so long as this doesn't involve things like betas of new iPhone OSes.

    In other words, the policy is going to be the same as it is for Mac OS X, where prerelease versions are covered under non-disclosure but you can talk about publicly released versions all you want.

    --
    If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
  2. Re:So you still cant bitch about being rejected? by Khakionion · · Score: 4, Informative

    Is that really so hard to understand?

    Any piece of code that elucidates Cocoa Touch/iPhone OS functionality couldn't be disclosed, because Cocoa Touch/iPhone OS was under the FNDA. It may be the developers' code, but it can speak volumes about the structure of the iPhone SDK.

    Now, the only code you can't distribute is code that uses new features in prerelease versions of the OS/SDK.

    --
    OMG! Wau!
  3. Re:Expect even more non-app store apps by Seakip18 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Saurik explains alot of it here.

    They developed using Apple's open-source stuff via darwin-gcc, if I understand correctly. You just never got any of the really cool class headers required to use the neater functions of the IPhone.

    In order to make the most with the 2.x firmware, you needed to get the SDK. Once you got it, you agreed to the NDA.

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    import system.cool.Sig;