Apple's new iPhone license agreement

ars technica covers it well


http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/04/apple-takes-aim-at-adobe-or-android.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss


Apple's new API license includes the following:

The new version of 3.3.1 reads:

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

This seems to mean that developers can not use tools that translate programs from one platform to the iPhone, or frameworks that try to make all smart-phones look-alike.

This is clearly a closed, dictatorial stance.

There are already many iPhone apps and games that are openly built this way - what do they do?

xmlvm, howto, xokoban, legions

But how can they test that a code-generator/cross compiler was used?

Perhaps this will spawn a new breed of code-generators that actually translate code from one language to another with same variable names, comments, parameters, etc.

Now that would be cool.