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Apple Drops Part of iPhone Developer NDA
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."
They were probably waiting for Android to be released.
GPL Deconstructed
They wanted to wait for the Android release so the API could not legally borrow too heavily from the iPhone API.
At least, that seems like a reasonable guess...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I suspect they were waiting for Android. Prior to its arrival, they were pretty much the only game in town, so there wasn't really anywhere for disgruntled developers to flee to.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
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.
Why would this affect jailbreakers? Why would they have ever agreed to an Apple NDA?
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
I've put my order in for a G1 and I'll be writing applications for that platform from now on. I spent far too long at the mercy of another iron fisted company to want to go back to that kind of situation.
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!
Apple is facing a mass exodus of phone developers with their constant blunders from secrecy and rejecting apps that threaten their own apps.
Did you just make that up?
The cellphone industry is rapidly moving to Android as their standard platform
Even if this is true... so what? Since Apple doesn't offer their platform to other makers, why would they care what other makers use?
This is just the first step in Apple's fade into niche irrelevance in the cellphone market.
If you take a step back, you'd see that they are already in a niche - supplying just a tiny fraction of cell phones. However, as they always seem to do, they picked a very profitable niche. If it gets too competitive, I wouldn't expect to see them hang around.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
When are people going to start bitching about Apple providing an email application in their phone, and then locking others out (as was discussed here earlier).
This is > Microsoft Antitrust (think internet exploder), ESPECIALLY with all the people screaming iphone iphone iphone (think, market penetration).
Not intended as a troll, but I have to wonder, when Apple can INTENTIONALLY lock vendors out of providing applications for their phone (and Apple is the OS and hardware provider here, make no mistake about it, NOT AT&T), but Microsoft gets raked over the coals about bundling internet exploder?
What the fuck? Seriously, what the FUCK?
No IPhone or Apple fan (although I do have a Mac), just gotta wonder, WTF is Jobs thinking?
--Toll_Free
Yes.
You write code. You can talk about that code. But if that code is based on somebody else's code, and that somebody else has that code under NDA, and your code implies information about their code, then you have to keep it under wraps.
More concretely, Apple's NDA cannot prevent you from discussing your own code. But if your code contains information about the iPhone code, you can't discuss that.
Now that things are being lifted, you can discuss the iPhone code and therefore your own code which relies on it. The only remaining restriction is that you can't talk about iPhone code which isn't public yet, and by implication any of your own code which relies on the non-public changes.
So this change covers only their prerelease software, and by extension any of your software which contains information about their prerelease software. But it doesn't, and can't, cover your own prerelease software by itself.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
We mac developers were led to believe that by WWDC, we'd have an SDK with a lifted NDA. Nope. Didn't happen.
We mac developers were led to believe that by July 11 when the iPhone 3G was released, we'd have an SDK with a lifted NDA. Nope. Didn't happen.
Now they tell us that the NDA will be lifted at some point in the near future. What's changed?
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.
import system.cool.Sig;
I disagree. I think that the market is largely driven by what consumers want. Apple has a huge head start--they are quite literally years ahead on hardware/software integration, having released a product that has yet to see any equal in overall end-user experience. People absolutely love the iPhone. Relatively speaking, they haven't even heard of what the competitors are offering, and even the recent release of Android has received minimal attention by comparison.
Now that I've established the context, it's easy to see why handset manufacturers and non-AT&T providers in the US are embracing Android. It is their best shot at competing with Apple. They moved too slow, lacked long-term vision, and failed to concede to Apple's demands. And now they're scrambling to keep up. iPhone + iTunes + App Store = killer combination. This has nothing to do with FOSS. Face it, few people have even seen what Android does, let alone have any real-world understanding of how well it will integrate with a variety of handsets and carriers. Because it hasn't happened yet. Maybe it'll be a competitor, maybe it won't. But I can confidently say that whatever the outcome, it won't look or feel nearly as clean as an Apple product.
I've also heard that despite a lot of grumblings by iPhone developers, they generally like the business model. Steve Demeter, for example, is on the record for saying he has no intention of bringing Trism to Android. This coming from a guy who made a quarter million in two months off his blockbuster game. So I don't think you're telling the whole story here. It's the secrecy they don't like, and with this latest turn, Apple has done the right thing.
Frankly, I'm amazed that you didn't get modded down. Your bias is so clearly showing and you lack any evidence to back up your outrageous claims. I think Android can be huge, and I like that Google has stepped up to provide more competition in the mobile computing market. I hope it lives up to the high expectations that the industry has set for it, but I'm not holding my breath because judging from how Motorola, Sony Ericsson, RIM, Palm, Samsung, LG, Nokia, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint, etc. have behaved in the past, I don't think they're going to all have some kind of Voltron moment and band together to bring down the "evil Apple."
After all, you're just cheering for one evil corporation to smite the other. Personally, what matters to me most is whether I get the user experience and customer service I expect. If Android facilitates this goal, then I'm all for it. But you won't catch me talking complete bullshit just because I have a stick up my ass about a particular company. That's so last decade.
Apple is facing a mass exodus of phone developers with their constant blunders from secrecy and rejecting apps that threaten their own apps.
As an iPhone developer, I could only pray that would be true. Contrary to your assertion though there seems to be a pretty good inlflux of new developers, and thus new competition, into the iPhone application development realm. And of course, lifting the NDA means all of the most experienced developers can now offer help to everyone, further increasing developer interest and retention and shared knowledge (not that a lot of that was not happening already, but now that books can be published...).
The cellphone industry is rapidly moving to Android as their standard platform with Motorola being the latest large cellphone company to embrace Google's open source OS with a ramp up of their internal Android team to 500 people.
Awesome for Android (which I like and may also develop apps for at some point), sucks to be Windows Mobile. Not sure I see any impact on the iPhone though.
To suggest that there is some sort of secret and valuable information in the iPhone SDK that anyone cares about is absolutely inane.
To suggest that many best practices for advanced development techniques have been easy to find is far more inane. Yes you know there's a UITableViewController. Do you know how to make cells using Interface Builder? Or how to have a text view become first responder as you enter a screen?
This is just the first step in Apple's fade into niche irrelevance in the cellphone market.
Careful there, your spittle is starting to obscure your writing.
Just another funny Apple Hater I guess. Tired of having his normal user ID pummeled by reason...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley