April 28, 2024

Troubling Highlights from The Phone Developer Agreement

Posted March 9, 2010 at 12:24pm by iClarified · 3636 views
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has posted some troubling highlights from the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement.

More than 100,000 app developers have agreed to this agreement but are prohibited from making any "public statements regarding this Agreement, its terms and conditions, or the relationship of the parties without Apple's express prior written approval." To obtain a copy the EFF used the Freedom of Information to ask NASA for the copy they signed when releasing their iPhone application.

Troubling Highlights:
- Ban on Public Statements-
- App Store Only
- Ban on Reverse Engineering
- No Tinkering with Any Apple Products:
- Kill Your App Any Time
- We Never Owe You More than Fifty Bucks

"Overall, the Agreement is a very one-sided contract, favoring Apple at every turn. That's not unusual where end-user license agreements are concerned (and not all the terms may ultimately be enforceable), but it's a bit of a surprise as applied to the more than 100,000 developers for the iPhone, including many large public companies. How can Apple get away with it? Because it is the sole gateway to the more than 40 million iPhones that have been sold."

Read More [via 9to5Mac]