Apple Drops iPhone Developer NDA

Good news to all of you iPhone developers who've been reinventing the wheel: you can stop now. Apple has ended the contentious non-disclosure agreement that's been stapled to the iPhone development software - the NDA that prevented developers from discussing their work with each other, exed out the possibility of iPhone development instruction, and generally frustrated dev-type folks who'd rather be brilliant than bogged down.

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.

Yay. It's hard to feel terribly protective of Apple, which may have had its work stolen before but doesn't appear to be suffering overmuch. It's a lot easier to feel sympathy for the poor (or not so poor, I suppose...) developers who just want to make an awesome lightsaber application.

Apple drops NDA for iPhone developers [CNet]