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Comment by saurik | Hacker News Reader

(This is what I said on Twitter in response.)

So, yes: someone approached me with a potential jailbreak; the goal being to get a non-piracy-laden jailbreak out; this does not seem bad...

...in particular, I do not see how it is "backstabbing" @evad3rs (as some claim): it was unlikely to work, and was mostly just "having fun".

Also, I am not part of @evad3rs: they made that very clear to me. They never told me anything about their exploit. Should I not help others?

I guess now the argument is that if people come to me with a potential jailbreak, in order to not "backstab", I am not allowed to help them?

Regardless, I gave the iOS 7 Substrate build to evad3rs on September 30th, and all I needed to test was a new copy of redsn0w (not evasi0n).

I guess I don't understand "we really wanted TaiG's deal, so when we heard a rumor of an open jailbreak we were rushed: shame on saurik". :/

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Did they change the text? What I'm seeing is:

> SaurikIT had been in talks with Chinese companies regarding potential partnerships, made a counteroffer. We believe they share our views on how a relationship with companies in China currently utilizing jailbreaking might benefit everyone in the community. Unfortunately, the negotiations did not work out. A few days later, we received information that SaurikIT was working with another group to release a jailbreak ahead of us. We decided to release, knowing that Cydia, MobileSubstrate, and jailbreak tweaks would be updated after a few days, just as it always has in the course of jailbreaking.

Which seems honest and clear enough (financial incentives and potential loss of the contract motivated the release) without the whole "shame on saurik" thing.

My Twitter replies were filled with people angry at me for "backstabbing", I think largely caused by i0n1c's interpretation of the letter.

> LOL now the @evad3rs say that @saurik backstabbed them and tried to release JB with other people. http://evasi0n.com/l.html

-- https://twitter.com/i0n1c/status/414859729081352192

Read the paragraph you accurately summarized again: you managed to make the inference, but what they actually wrote was akin to "we decided to release because we didn't want Saurik to be first," not "we decided to release because we could lose our contract and money."

Payment was conditional on being first and being exclusive. You do not pay 1 million dollars to be second out the gate, particularly because you can simply copy the first guy's work.

Unless the evad3rs released first, they would not get paid. Or, more accurately, they would have to return money. I don't think they were excited by that prospect.

This evad3rs letter is, to use clapper-ism, "the least untruthful statement"

I'm confused as to why some people in the community believe a party was "backstabbed". Each team/group operated with its own intentions and goals; there's no reason why there had to be cooperation amongst them.

I feel like the reaction to this is more due to a general mistrust of Chinese software and a worship of MobileSubstrate.

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