Though Apple has remained protective of its closed iPhone ecosystem ever since its release, Android may be forcing the company to relax its iron grip just a bit. On Wednesday, the company posted an update to its developer’s page announcing that it would drop the non-disclosure agreement imposed on its developers – presumably to keep them from jumping ship to the more open Android platform.
According to Apple, the original NDA existed to keep the iPhone’s innovations from being “ripped off by others,” but as interest in the platform grew, the moratorium on developer discussion became a hassle. The Pragmatic Programmers, for instance, had to nix a book due to legal issues with the NDA, a book that has since surfaced in the wake of the NDA removal.
“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,” Apple said in its posting.
The end of the NDA has so far been met with a wave approval from iPhone developers, who are now free to discuss programming for the iPhone with one another without the threat of legal action. Formal, organized outlets for discussions are perhaps the most liberated by the lifted NDA, paving the way for books, tutorials, conferences, exhibitions and less discrete online forums.
