The only possible reason I could think for someone doing this is because it would work cross-OS, and even on boot sequences before a normal keylogger would be activated, so you could do this to steal a disk encryption password.
You could use it constructively, though. You could block the key sequences used to boot off a CD or external drive, which could actually be a useful feature for corporations or schools wanting to prevent booting from external media, since the other methods to prevent that don't work that well.
You seem to be missing the point here. Since this is the iPhone, there is no way to freely compile the source. You could either use other tools and a jailbroken iPhone, but the legality of that is questionable. You could pay $99 to be able to publish your app, and put it on the app store for free, but (assuming apple approves it) you would lose $99. You could put ads on it, but that decreases the quality of the app. So basically, Apple screws FOSS programs in every way possible.
I remember this chess app, back in the days of the original iPhone. I had installed it after jailbreaking my phone, and I liked it. Then, when the 2.0 update came with the app store, I didn't bother installing any apps from the app store because I was waiting for a jailbreak. When it came, I realized that all of my favorite things had been removed from the repositories and put in the app store, and many of them were not free (like that chess app). When I looked on the dev's site, I found that it was still GPL. But with the iPhone, the source code is effectively no longer free. It has a $99 price tag, since having source code, but not being able to compile and use it is pretty much useless.
I know that it does not matter whether or not it's free as in beer. The problem is that you cannot modify it or redistribute binaries. You also are require to provide all the necessary things to compile it. And I don't think he's providing an SDK license.
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The only possible reason I could think for someone doing this is because it would work cross-OS, and even on boot sequences before a normal keylogger would be activated, so you could do this to steal a disk encryption password.
You could use it constructively, though. You could block the key sequences used to boot off a CD or external drive, which could actually be a useful feature for corporations or schools wanting to prevent booting from external media, since the other methods to prevent that don't work that well.
You seem to be missing the point here. Since this is the iPhone, there is no way to freely compile the source. You could either use other tools and a jailbroken iPhone, but the legality of that is questionable. You could pay $99 to be able to publish your app, and put it on the app store for free, but (assuming apple approves it) you would lose $99. You could put ads on it, but that decreases the quality of the app. So basically, Apple screws FOSS programs in every way possible. I remember this chess app, back in the days of the original iPhone. I had installed it after jailbreaking my phone, and I liked it. Then, when the 2.0 update came with the app store, I didn't bother installing any apps from the app store because I was waiting for a jailbreak. When it came, I realized that all of my favorite things had been removed from the repositories and put in the app store, and many of them were not free (like that chess app). When I looked on the dev's site, I found that it was still GPL. But with the iPhone, the source code is effectively no longer free. It has a $99 price tag, since having source code, but not being able to compile and use it is pretty much useless. I know that it does not matter whether or not it's free as in beer. The problem is that you cannot modify it or redistribute binaries. You also are require to provide all the necessary things to compile it. And I don't think he's providing an SDK license.