Apple's iPhone Developer License Agreement Revealed

nigham writes "The EFF is publicly disclosing a version of Apple's iPhone developer program license agreement. The highlights: you can't disclose the agreement itself (the EFF managed to get it via the Freedom of Information Act thanks to NASA's recent app), Apple reserves the right to kill your app at any time with no reason, and Apple's liability in any circumstance is limited to 50 bucks. There's also this gem: 'You will not, through use of the Apple Software, services or otherwise create any Application or other program that would disable, hack, or otherwise interfere with the Security Solution, or any security, digital signing, digital rights management, verification or authentication mechanisms implemented in or by the iPhone operating system software, iPod Touch operating system software, this Apple Software, any services or other Apple software or technology, or enable others to do so.' The entire agreement (PDF) is up at the EFF's site."

Comments

Re:What's the big deal?

[KylePflug]

You're wrong. The phone is sold. The software, service, and SDK are licensed.

I'm sorry if it makes me a fanboi to point that out, but you should probably note that the same is true about your Windows or Linux computer (yes, the GPL is a revocable license as well), any cell phone you may be using (I guarantee the software is licensed, not sold), and probably even the firmware for your car stereo.

This is the world of capitalist consumer electronics. The hardware is sold, but the seller will exert whatever control over the end product they can - and the best way to do so is by controlling the software and services attached to the hardware. Which is why Microsoft will try to remote-nuke your PC if you play nasty with it, and why Apple pushes out anti-Hackintosh tweaks with every update, and why jailbroken app developers find their iTunes accounts revoked.

It is not some "apple fanboi" disease which makes Apple customers think they own their phones. They DO own their phones, just like you own theirs. And their use of the attached software and service is licensed, just like yours.

Re:What's the big deal?

[BitZtream]

And I'd like to point out, contrary to slashdot groupthink/fanboying, Disney provides awesome vacations and Apple has made great a phone and several awesome music players.

You can entirely disagree with any and all of my statements, but that won't change the fact that the majority of the population which has experienced the above to items will agree that in general, both are best in class products/services.

Another shocker to slashdot, most of the time, total chaos is not beneficial to productivity. I realize that the OSS world manages to make progress, but you'd be an idiot to argue that its efficient over all. For every 1 example of OSS making something more efficient, there are 600 forks wasting about 1200 more times the effort to do it a different way with no advantage in doing so.