Apple Gives a Little on Its NDA

      by Wyatt Walter

Last week I talked a bit about the potential damage Apple could be doing to its iPhone by making potential developers for the platform angry. Apple today has finally lifted part of the NDA policy, though not quite all the way. Obviously their statement is riddled with marketing garbage, but it made me change my views of the issue just slightly.

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.

Perhaps this statement gave us a little insight into why Apple may not want developers who’s applications that failed to ‘make the cut’ to disclose the reasons. Apple has a very fine line to walk and from what I know, no one has tried to walk this line before. Apple is, of course, continually getting ready for the new iPhone and is notorious for not being open about its new product roadmaps. The whole Apple community almost thrives on the conferences when new products will be announced. Usually some sort of rumor will leak, but often software features are not solidified to the public until just months before their release. This gives Apple its edge on its competition since they can’t see what’s coming.

So what does this have to do with applications that fail to make it to the iTunes App Store? Now, I can’t promise anything, but I read the press release as though Apple doesn’t want to let the public know of applications that were shot down due to similar functionality because that functionality might be on the roadmap for a future release. If Apple allows developers to tell others that an application has been rejected due to similar functionality that doesn’t exist, they could be showing their hand on future features.

While their slacking off a bit on the NDA wasn’t quite what I would have been looking for, I think Apple has shown a bit of the other side of this issue. Apple has placed itself in an awkward position. It is wanting to provide some sort of quality of its product by filtering out applications that could have similar functionality to built-in ones that could confuse the users, yet it has to try to be as open as possible so as to not make developers angry. Dropping the NDA on released software was a definite step in the right direction for being more open with developers and not disheartening its community in the process of keeping its Apple mystery.

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Filed under News, Tech Trends : Comments (0) : Oct 1st, 2008

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