Apple Drops Part of iPhone Developer NDA 175
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."
Re:So you still cant bitch about being rejected? (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.
Re:So you still cant bitch about being rejected? (Score:4, Informative)
f I read this right, does that mean developers still can't publicly bitch about their apps being rejected from the store?
You have been reading an announcement about a change in the NDA. Whatever is in that announcement has no legal value whatsoever. Trying to search for a deep meaning in each word of this announcement is completely pointless. If you have a changed NDA in your hands, then whatever that changed NDA says is the new rules.
Also note that Apple _always_ puts all its own unreleased software under NDA. Therefore XCode 3.1 (which was and is needed for iPhone development) was under NDA until it was released a few weeks ago. So "unreleased software and features will remain under NDA until they are released" is exactly what Apple has always said for many years, iPhone or no iPhone.
You misunderstand "release", iPhone OS versions (Score:3, Informative)
If I read this right, does that mean developers still can't publicly bitch about their apps being rejected from the store?
"released software" means APPLE released software. As in, you can talk about API versions that are out in public but not versions that are still developer preview only.
Re:So you still cant bitch about being rejected? (Score:5, 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.
Re:Expect even more non-app store apps (Score:3, Informative)
Argh.
Should read
Saurik and other jailbroken-iphone devs
Click here [saurik.com] if you want to get a see what is needed to compile code developed outside of Apple's X-Code.
Re:Expect even more non-app store apps (Score:5, Informative)
Saurik explains alot of it here [saurik.com].
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.
You always could (Score:3, Informative)
How about open source? Can we build FOSS for the thing now?
There are already a number of iPhone projects on Google Code that were there before. It was just a question before if you wanted to risk you developer status and App Store distribution ability to add to them... now that's lifted iPhone OSS should be more abundant.
Re:same ol, same ol (Score:1, Informative)
I've been doing some Symbian development on Nokia S60 3rd ed. platform and let me tell you, that it's a horror story.
The API documentation is horrible and spotty, debugging is a pain in the ass and the error messages are non descriptive at best. And that's disregarding the draconian and expensive certification requirements...
Re:You're rewriting economics too? (Score:3, Informative)
You're telling me that in 2006 and 2007 that the same people who would buy an iPod went out and bought WinMo and Treos?
No, they probably bought RAZRs. And most of them are still buying something like RAZRs. The market for smartphones (even if we include the iPhone) is tiny.
In 2007 when the iPhone was only available for half a year and only in the US, it was the number 2 handset!
In 2000 when the iPaq was only available for half a year, it brought the Windows Mobile share of the PDA market from single digits to maybe 15%... but for the next four years until Palm decided to self-destruct by ostentatiously dissing PalmOS in favor of the yet to be released (and now apparently never to be released) BeOS based OS... Windows Mobile didn't break 20% of the market.
And the iPhone wasn't the #2 handset in 2007, it was #2 smartphone. This August it was... hmm, #2. And #1 was... Blackberry? Not Nokia? Well, with a tiny market like that, a single device can create a sudden surge, and Blackberry's new touch screen device is apparently selling really well. I guess all those app developers need to switch from iPhone to Blackberry.