The seal on Apple's iPhone SDK is leaking, even within Apple

You can discuss Apple's iPhone SDK, but only if you feel guilty about it.

In my Ahead of the Curve post entitled "Apple's iPhone contracts leave developers speechless," I pointed out that the Registered Developer, Developer Program and SDK Agreements forbid iPhone developers, including those who obtained the SDK for free, from talking with each other unless they work for the same company. It's the first time I've seen a vendor declare that the public can't discuss publicly-available information.

Apple is poisoning its own well, but no one need wonder why iPhone developers aren't in an uproar over the NDA. Developers value App Store as an effortless delivery, update and payment mechanism for shareware. App Store is the tastiest developer benefit Apple has, and its beneficiaries aren't about to bite any hands.

Developers may like what they see in App Store, but for consumers the experience is, so far, a mixed bag. Read the consumer comments for most of the free or inexpensive App Store programs and you'll see that stability and usability complaints top users' remarks. Even though the Xcode tools are sweet, iPhone development, like Mac platform development, is not easy. Mac coders raise up other Mac coders. iPhone developers are stuck having to teach themselves, and the gem to junk ratio on App Store is the result.

Can Apple really be serious about keeping the publicly-available iPhone SDK under tight NDA? This post from the moderator of Apple's cocoa-dev mailing list, dated July 10, 2008, sums up the company line more succinctly than Apple's lawyers have done:

Until an announcement is made otherwise, developers should be aware that the iPhone SDK is still under non-disclosure. It can't be discussed here, or anywhere publicly. This includes other mailing lists, forums, and definitely blogs.

[...]

When the SDK is lifted an announcement will be made here.

Thanks for your understanding

Scott

[moderator]

I think he meant to say "When the NDA is lifted..." I take it as a hopeful sign that Scott [moderator] thinks the NDA will be lifted one day. Until then, he's drawn an unequivocal line in the sand: No iPhone talk on Apple's cocoa-dev mailing list.

Apple doesn't apply Scott's cut and dried ethics everywhere. Search for "iPhone SDK" in Apple's official discussion groups. You might not see the results that I did when I looked, so I took a snapshot that you may find either silly or revealing: