In a statement to developers on its website Apple has dropped the NDA agreement. Here is the full statement from Apple:
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.
I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear this.
3 thoughts on “Apple FINALLY drops the iPhone NDA”
I guess we can expect now a flood of information from the developer’s community. I already saw a new book about the SDK development that can be pre-ordered at Amazon.com. I really can use that community support.
Sweet. That means that book we heard about earlier this week on iPhone development should be coming out soon.
So, now how long is it going to take for the average iPhone user to see any benefit from this? 6 months? a year?
I understand that the NDA made it more difficult for developers to work how they normally would but I don’t actually think that any developers stopped working on a project or didn’t include features in an app because it took them an extra week or so to implement it.
The dropping of the NDA obviously makes things easier but I don’t expect anyone other than the developers to really notice any difference.