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EFF publishes Apple's iPhone Developer Program License Agreement with commentary

iPhone

Stories about Apple's stranglehold of control over the iPhone App Store have been raging since its inception. However, without signing up to the developer program, it's not easy to find out just what rights developers do and don't have.

This is due to the terms of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement; all iPhone developers have to agree to these terms in order to be eligible to submit their programs to the App Store. One of the terms states specifically that developers must abstain from making any public statements about the agreement without Apple's prior written approval.

Luckily for us, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has posted a copy of the agreement which includes commentary on specific sections that they chose to highlight. Apple watchers won't find anything particularly surprising, but it certainly does represent a major shift in the rights that developers will have, with regard to the platforms they are developing for, going forward. The number of willing developers is far greater than the number of potentially lucrative platforms, thus putting the platform vendors firmly in the driver's seat.


Tags: apple, developer, developer program, DeveloperProgram, developers, electronic frontier, ElectronicFrontier

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