[Apple] announced that it would no longer enforce its non-disclosure agreement for software it has released:

The NDA has created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone’s success.

Software that hasn’t been released is still covered by the agreement.

That certainly sounds like a sensible distinction: Companies have a right to keep things that are secret a secret, but once the cat is out of the bag, it can’t be a secret any more.

There have been an increasing number developers complaining that Apple is making it too hard for developers, such as in this blog post on Ars Technica.

Despite its Soviet style of communication, Apple is certainly signaling that it understands that needs to keep its developers’some of its most fervent advocates’from becoming so angry they will switch their efforts to Google’s Android or other projects.

Earlier this week, Apple tweaked a few policies that had made some developers feel that the marketplace in the iTunes App store was unfair. Now you have to have bought the application to be able to review it. And a developer can’t simply make a minor modification in a program to jump to the top of the list of new applications.

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