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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
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.
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.
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;
They wanted to wait for the Android release so the API could not legally borrow too heavily from the iPhone API.
I highly doubt it. Google has their own Mac developers and one of the first apps bundled on the iPhone was a YouTube video program. Google has had access to the iPhone API's long before most other developers. Google Mobile App was available on the App Store since July 3. Besides, IIRC, Android is based on Java whereas the iPhone OS X is based on Objective C. More likely, the fear of iPhone developers leaving for Android was an incentive. Hopefully they'll go ahead and drop the whole darned thing since any Tom, Dick or Harry can sign up for the ADC and download the dev tools.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Android.
No it's not. Microsoft was ready to kill entire pc manufacturers over the IE/Netscape issue, and they more than had the power to do so.
No independent developer -has- to release on the iPhone.
Seriously, people HATE Apple for completely irrational reasons and back them up with poorly constructed arguments. At least the Microsoft hate has -legal backing- behind it.
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.