Much has been written anecdotally about the Apple app-approval process, with the words “arcane" and “Kafkaesque" coming up a lot. But the letter (and crimping spirit) of the agreement was a matter of pure speculation until the Electronic Frontier Foundation had the clever idea of making one developer an offer he couldn't refuse.
That developer was NASA -- a government agency that can't exactly keep all the secrets it might want to -- and the offer was really a demand under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a nonprofit organization that defends free speech, privacy, innovation and consumer rights. Senior staff attorney Fred von Lohmann used an FOIA request to compel NASA to release Apple's nondisclosure agreement for iPhone developers. Apple forces developers to sign the NDA before they can access the software development kit for the iPhone OS, which also powers the iPad.
Apple is possibly one of the most tight-lipped companies on the planet, so glimpses like this into its inner workings are rare. Making matters worse, the agreement itself bars developers from making “public statements" about the agreement's terms, so without this confluence of events, it may never have come to light. As Wired.com's Dylan Tweney tweeted, “The first rule of the iPhone developer program is: You do not talk about the iPhone developer program."
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