New iPhone SDK bans jailbreaking, non-Store app making

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New iPhone SDK bans jailbreaking, non-Store app making

The latest version of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, which developers must agree to before downloading and/or using the iPhone SDK or beta versions of the iPhone OS, has added a clause forbidding developers from working on or assisting with jailbreak projects or jailbroken applications. According to Ars Technica, the clause also forbids developers from jailbreaking their own devices. The move follows comments filed by Apple with the U.S. Copyright Office arguing that that jailbreaking constitutes copyright infringement and a DMCA violation, and is therefore illegal.

The relevant clause states, “(e)You will not, through use of the Apple Software, services or otherwise, create any Application or other program that would disable, hack or otherwise interfere with the Security Solution, or any security, digital signing, digital rights management, verification or authentication mechanisms implemented in or by the iPhone operating system software, iPod touch operating system software, this Apple Software, any services or other Apple software or technology, or enable others to do so; and (f) Applications developed using the Apple Software may only be distributed if selected by Apple (in its sole discretion) for distribution via the App Store or for limited distribution on Registered Devices (ad hoc distribution) as contemplated in this Agreement.”

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Comments

1

This sounds distinctly illegal to me. Can you imagine Microsoft only allowing developers to sign up to a vista SDK if they promise never to develop for Apple applications? Seems the same to me, banning developer for working for the competition to their ap store.

Posted by jim stewart on April 2, 2009 at 7:17 AM (PST)

2

As a fledgling Apple developer it all sounds fair enough to me. If you want to use their toys, you follow their rules.
There are plenty of other ways to go if you have to flex your “I have the right to do whatever I want” muscles..

Posted by Bryan on April 2, 2009 at 7:40 AM (PST)

3

I’m not surprised… and I don’t think it’s distinctly illegal, I think it’s more like Apple’s OS X Eula which says it can only be installed on Apple hardware. You use their software, you agree to it, you have to agree to their conditions. Now, while that’s being challenged in court, it may or may not hold up in the long run. In this case, though, they hold the keys to the purse strings of the developers in question and could (theoretically) cut them off, giving this some teeth whereas with the OS X thing, it’s a little harder to enforce. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Posted by unseenthings on April 2, 2009 at 7:48 AM (PST)

4

Microsoft has put arbitrary limitations on their development tools. For example, they had (and probably still do, I haven’t looked recently) terms explicitly preventing you from using them to create competing applications to MS Office.

Posted by dave on April 2, 2009 at 10:08 AM (PST)

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