Apple Drops NDA for Released iPhone Software

Apple has announced that effective immediately that they are dropping the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for all released versions of Apple's iPhone Software. Per the Apple website:

"We have decided to drop the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for released iPhone software. We put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS includes many Apple inventions and innovations that we would like to protect, so that others don?t steal our work. It has happened before. While we have filed for hundreds of patents on iPhone technology, the NDA added yet another level of protection. We put it in place as one more way to help protect the iPhone from being ripped off by others.

"However, 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. Developers will receive a new agreement without an NDA covering released software within a week or so. Please note that unreleased software and features will remain under NDA until they are released."

Tom Krazit of our sister site News.com writes:

"A heavily moderated mailing list for Cocoa developers (Apple's user interface technology) rejoiced at the prospect that they could discuss tips for iPhone development the way they discuss Mac development. Before Wednesday morning, they simply couldn't do such a thing in public, for fear of getting booted out of the iPhone Developer Program. Of course, in this era of ubiquitous communications, it's pretty hard to keep people under wraps, if they have something they want to say, but Apple's decision to apply the iPhone SDK's NDA to released software forced developers to go underground simply to share tips and tricks they discovered when working on a freely available application."