iPhone News Desk
Apple Drops the iPhone NDA for Released Software
It's just a shame that Apple took so long to open the doors
Oct. 2, 2008 05:00 AM
Kevin Hoffman's Blog
Went to the developer program site a few minutes ago and saw the following notice:

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.
Rest assured that I'll be commenting further on this subject, but I wanted to post letting people know that the floodgates are about to open. I'm guessing iPhone bloggers are going to start posting massive amounts of code samples in the coming days. Good times for all... It's just a shame that Apple took so long to open the doors... I feel really bad for the authors who had to change their writing plans and even change the content of their books to accomodate Apple's resistance to lifting the NDA.
Enjoy!
About Kevin HoffmanKevin Hoffman, editor-in-chief of SYS-CON's iPhone Developer's Journal, is Technical Chair of iPhone Developer Summit. He has been programming since he was 10 and has written everything from DOS shareware to n-tier, enterprise web applications in VB, C++, Delphi, and C. Hoffman is coauthor of Professional .NET Framework (Wrox Press) and co-author with Robert Foster of Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Development Unleashed. He authors The .NET Addict's Blog at .NET Developer's Journal.