iPhone Development

I recently had a discussion with Jamie about how it was difficult for developers to communicate and share knowledge about development for the iPhone because of Apple’s stifling non-disclosure agreement. Seems Apple didn’t want their secrets to get out.

The problem with the NDA is that real progress is often made through sharing what we’ve learned with each other as a community. Open discourse is what has helped bring the Flash community forward over the years and can be seen across the whole development world, from the Linux community to forward thinking companies sharing their source (think Google’s new browser, Chrome.)

Well, I’m guessing Apple was taking a LOT of criticism for this as I found this today:

Dear Apple Developers…

I think the lesson we should learn from this is that the real model for the development community at large is one of openness and sharing. It’s nice to see Apple bending to the pressure of that community. I’m hoping we’ll be seeing more online now about what people are doing with their iPhone projects/experiments.