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Comment by tlrobinson | Hacker News Reader

"Think about it: If there were a Flash player for the iPhone, you could write games and other software in Flash rather than in Cocoa Touch. And you could sell games and apps directly for the Flash player, completely circumventing the App Store. Does this sound like something Apple would allow?"

But...

   No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an 
   Application except for code that is interpreted and run by 
   Apple’s Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).

Built-in interpreter(s), eh? Maybe something like the JavaScript interpreter in MobileSafari?

I see a loophole. Of course that doesn't matter since Apple seems perfectly willing to reject apps they don't like for arbitrary reasons.

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Well, Apple can do what they want. It's the others that need to adhere to these rules.

The point that I was trying to get at without breaking any sort of NDA that I may or may not be under was that perhaps there's a way to embed some sort of Apple-sanctioned interpreter in an application...

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Reference/Web...

The problem being nobody knows what these rules are. Applications have been accepted that are incompatible with the NDA, and conversely, applications with no NDA incompatibilities have been rejected or pulled for frivolous/unknown/bizarre reasons.

When I look at all these complaints from iPhone developers about the NDA right now, it's not as much about how irrational some parts of it are (really, not letting pragprog publish an iPhone dev book?) but more about how other parts that exist to someone at Apple are not made public to developers and their clients/customers so they know what the actual limitations are. Effectively a black box. Fantastic way to get people to not spend money and time on an application they don't know will be approved or rejected until they're close to finishing up on an initial release.

Therein lies the problem: there are no published rules. You only find out that you've broken them after you've completed development of your app and submitted it to the app store. Say goodbye to several months of your life.

Seems like a gamble and some people are winning big. Gambling is not for everyone though.

Apparently it's pretty well-stated in the docs they give you.

The problem with that part of the NDA is that Frotz is available on the app store and has been for a month or two. Frotz is an interactive fiction application (arguably interpreted) and also open source (gplv2, http://code.google.com/p/iphonefrotz/), two things technically incompatible with the NDA.

I don't really think Apple meant to include the likes of Frotz. Seems like the biggest issue is arbitrary rejection (as you mention), and not so much whether or not the NDA is strictly followed..exceptions made for applications that Apple sees nothing bad in. Of course, Flash would be a more direct threat to the App Store than IF, sooo...I have a feeling that even if there were some sort of loophole, Apple would reject it anyway. Shame, cause I'm not really interested in games, I just want to view some websites that don't have non-Flash fallback (sometimes for a legitimate reason) on my phone.

This also sucks from a developer perspective, but that particular issue has been discussed to excess everywhere without Apple yet doing something positive..

How would GPL make an app incompatible with the NDA?

I am just guessing, but it is currently against NDA for me to publish any source code to an iphone app that I write. If that app is based on GPL'd code, then I am obligated to make the source available, no? So the NDA and GPL would indeed seem to be at odds right now, unless I am not seeing something...

Ah, then I see the problem. Seems like it's no longer a problem though, saw some headline about the nda being dropped.

> against NDA for me to publish any source code to an iphone app that I write

Wow, that's awful.

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