iPhone Developers Kept Quiet by Apple’s NDA

When the iPhone SDK was first released, Apple instituted an NDA which forced software developers to remain quiet which, at the time, made sense for the company to maintain secrecy – especially with the new 3G iPhone on the way. However, before the App Store was rolled out on July 11, word surfaced that Apple planned to do away with the requirement of secrecy, allowing developers to communicate with one another.

Unfortunately for many, the non-disclosure agreement did not expire. The legal wall that prevented developers from communicating, assisting one another and even creating GPL applications and examples was still visible. This prompted Justin Williams, a developer for Second Gear to create a site called ####ingNDA.com, which takes all tweets from the social micro-blogging site Twitter.com that contain the phrase “####ing NDA” (the expletive version), and congregates them.

William comments, “there is no legal way for developers to talk about they are developing. No way to post tutorials. No way to give code away. It’s hard to interact with other developers and to write code without reinventing the wheel. Normally, you could post [a coding question] on Twitter and get an answer within minutes.” This forces many to re-create the wheel and, in some cases, resort to using an implementation that isn’t as good as what could have been done if they had the help necessary.

Apple has yet to comment about the future of the NDA and whether or not it will be removed as a stipulation for development on the platform.

The iPhone development community is growing rapidly, but Apple’s treatment of some of its biggest supporters is drawing more ire than kudos.

Because of the company’s restrictive non-disclosure agreement (NDA), iPhone developers are legally banned from sharing programming tips, discussing code or asking questions of one another in forums or over e-mail.