Apple Drops iPhone SDK NDA
Back in August, I asked why Apple was persisting with its iPhone Developer NDA. I said that they’d have to drop it, because it was actively causing harm to iPhone developers, and thus to iPhone customers. Responders in the comments told me that I didn’t understand Apple, or its priorities; and that it wasn’t an important issue. Well, it turns out that Apple agrees with my assessment of this issue: today, the company is dropping the NDA. In a letter to developers, Apple writes:
To Our Developers
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.
Mr X wrote:
I think to be fair to your commentors Robert B said that if you looked at the Mac ( as oppose to the iPhone ) it was normal to get an NDA to start with which was normally dropped over time.
Hmm that’s what happened here.
I said it was probably in place because of Apple’s sad history of having stuff nicked wholesale - this was the reason implied in the Apple announcement.
I said I didn’t care about the NDA - not the same as saying it wasn’t important - it just wasn’t important to me - and still isn’t. Other implied it wouldn’t directly affect sales and as there was not competition for developers yet there was no incentive for Apple. iPhone sales have been strong.
I note that the announcement was followed the arrival of the first real competition.
The issue around not understanding Apple was on whether the SDK was planned all along or not - which this announcement sheds no light.
Posted 02 Oct 2008 at 8:56 pm ¶
simon wrote:
Well, I didn’t notice anyone in the comments saying, “Yes, the iPhone SDK NDA is currently a net negative for the platform and it should be dropped.”
Posted 02 Oct 2008 at 10:04 pm ¶