I'd like to just make a quick note to Cory D and other FSF, EFF, GPL, etc zealots who don't seem to understand how the market really works.
Apple is succeeding with the App Store and the hardware that carries it, not in spite of the controls, but because of them. The overall quality of software on the App Store rises for those controls, and there has been far fewer cases of malware slipping past the approval process than the Android Marketplace (Android users, at least feel better that any malware written for that platform probably won't run on every device anyways). Both Android and Palm marketplaces have had to block or pull apps to make their partner networks happy too, for the record, so don't feel like Apple is somehow alone in saying no to certain things. That the others have ways to install apps outside their respective marketplaces is not really relevant: Most users don't know how to, and they take their devices operation into their own hands when they do.
Any developer who doesn't want to follow the EULA still has options. They can always just, you know, not develop for the iPhone – If the marketplace just isn't right for your special needs, find another one, let me know how that works out.... I'm sure the Palm and Android markets will be happy to have you. You can still develop as a web application, without any checks to the content you're offering. Hey, then you can get all the Palm and Android users too.
Last item. Don't tell the tech journalists out there, but you can still get porn on the iPhone.... There's this amazing app called Safari! Seriously.... We all know Apple was going to be tar-and-feathered the first time Fred Thompson or some other "save our children" lawyer got wind of a nipple on the app store. By preempting the discussion Apple is just protecting themselves from the media storm from that, for it would be worse. Ask the folks who make GTA about such things.... If you want to pick on anyone, pick on the folks who attack platform providers for their content, not the platform providers who are just trying to stay in business.
iPhone developer EULA turns programmers into serfs: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published the Apple iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, a secretive document that requires its signatories to agree to a gag order on the terms of the deal. EFF got the agreement by submitting a Freedom of Information Act request to NASA, who had signed onto it in order to release its app. EFF Senior IP Attorney Fred von Lohmann has some pithy analysis of just how awful this agreement is for the programmers who gets sucked into it:
Overall, the Agreement is a very one-sided contract, favoring Apple at every turn. That's not unusual where end-user license agreements are concerned (and not all the terms may ultimately be enforceable), but it's a bit of a surprise as applied to the more than 100,000 developers for the iPhone, including many large public companies. How can Apple get away with it? Because it is the sole gateway to the more than 40 million iPhones that have been sold. In other words, it's only because Apple still 'owns' the customer, long after each iPhone (and soon, iPad) is sold, that it is able to push these contractual terms on the entire universe of software developers for the platform.
In short, no competition among app stores means no competition for the license terms that apply to iPhone developers.
If Apple's mobile devices are the future of computing, you can expect that future to be one with more limits on innovation and competition (or 'generativity,' in the words of Prof. Jonathan Zittrain) than the PC era that came before. It's frustrating to see Apple, the original pioneer in generative computing, putting shackles on the market it (for now) leads. If Apple wants to be a real leader, it should be fostering innovation and competition, rather than acting as a jealous and arbitrary feudal lord. Developers should demand better terms and customers who love their iPhones should back them.
It's amazing all the ways that the iPhone manages to screw the people that love it: saddling iPhone owners with crappy contracts with abusive mobile companies, limiting their access to programs and forcing them into one-sided EULAs, then screwing the developers with equally abusive agreements. I guess that's one way to think different.
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