PhoneGap and the Apple developer license agreement. | April 14th, 2010
Yesterday I made a quick update to a previous blog post. I will go into a little more depth here as some folks mis-understood that this was a new topic because it was part of the older post.
Recent changes to the Apple iPhone SDK developer license agreement have been a hot topic over the last week. There has been much speculation over how far reaching the 3.3.1 clause of the agreement is, not to mention the business strategy behind it. I will not join that conversation, but I will speak of what I have learned with regards to the impact on PhoneGap (iPhone/iPad).
Through email discussions with Apple, I specifically asked what, if any, impact did this have on present/future applications submitted to the App store that were built using PhoneGap. In no uncertain terms, my contacts at Apple have assured me that “PhoneGap is not in violation of the 3.3.1 clause of the license agreement.”
How this affects other tool-chains like Appcelerator, Flash CS5, Corona, MonoTouch, … I have absolutely no idea. All I can say is that PhoneGap is okay.
I will post updated information if I receive it, I have done a few other things to test the waters. Yesterday I submitted my iPhone PhoneGap Tutorial application to the App Store, I will post info here when/if it is approved ( although it may be rejecting for offering insufficient functionality, as it is a tutorial ).
The tutorial source code is available here: http://bit.ly/Jestitute
April 14th, 2010 at 5:33 pm
Seems like double-good-news.
Good news because I’d hate to see one of my development platforms arbitrarily disappear from my list of choices.
And very good news because, well… let me explain. Apple seems to say that they want to limit the choice of tools to the ones that will offer direct, untainted, access to the native APIs, the ones that will allow developers to use the full potential of the devices and the OS. If they include Javascript in the “good ones” it means that they will actively develop and maintain the JS APIs, and make them a first-class citizen for access to the devices.
So long as nobody realizes this actually enables cross-platform development and decides this is a bad thing for Apple, we’re all good.
April 14th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
Congrats Jesse and PhoneGap for passing the ever-stricter Apple App Store rules…
As for Flash, many sources say the 3.3.1 clause specifically targets Flash. phew..
April 15th, 2010 at 12:31 am
I just started phonegap based development and I was a “little” worried about those recent news.
Thanks Jesse for sharing your inside info!
April 15th, 2010 at 5:34 am
Excellent news! I’ve spent 2 months working on a fairly complicated app for a boss who would blame me (and only me) if it fell foul of the new rules!
Now I just need to get my damned enrollment sorted. I’m on hold as my billing info differs from my enrollment info (my card has an extra ‘Mr’ on it). One day. One day…
April 15th, 2010 at 6:28 am
Sorry but I can’t see this happening. Apple will be in very hot water indeed if they allow one 3rd party non Obj-C solution and not another (read WTC, EUTC etc).
April 15th, 2010 at 6:59 am
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April 16th, 2010 at 5:52 am
This is great news. Thanks for the update.
April 16th, 2010 at 6:00 pm
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June 17th, 2010 at 6:19 am
I am new to learning PhonGap and very interested in looking at your tutorial I downloaded at http://github.com/purplecabbage/Jestitute/tree/master/iPhone/PhoneGapTutorial/
But when I tried to Build and Run, I got this error.
++++++
“_kUTTypeImage”, referenced from:
_kUTTypeImage$non_lazy_ptr in libPhoneGapLib.a(Camera.o)
(maybe you meant: _kUTTypeImage$non_lazy_ptr)
ld: symbol(s) not found
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
BUILD FAILED
++++++
Any suggestions?
July 12th, 2010 at 1:32 pm
The application was built linking to an older version of PhoneGapLib. You will need to add the framework : MobileCoreServices.framework
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