14 DAY TRIAL // The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has developed and released an Alerts app that notifies you when there's a new action you can take to support the organization by advocating for better technology laws.
EFF Alerts, currently available on Android devices, acts as a tool that can help users badmouth the very App Store that the software is being distributed on, which is why it wouldn’t be approved in the first place. However, the EFF insists that it is them who are refusing to even submit it.
The agreement you sign to sell an app is “bad”
“As we have been saying for years now, the Developer Agreement is bad for developers and users alike. Here are a few of the terms that we are worried about,” the EFF states in a lengthy post on eff.org.
Chief among the stipulations that rub the EFF the wrong way is the Ban on Public statements, which basically says that you can’t talk about the Agreement in a public manner, despite the documentation being 100% public. Indeed, unlike other documents distributed by Apple with the purpose of aiding developers, the Developer Agreement does not fall under Confidential Information.
The EFF also doesn’t like the fact that Apple’s guidelines ban Reverse Engineering, although Apple has every right to enforce this rule, nor does it feel too good about Section 7.3 which states that applications developed with the tools provided by Apple (Xcode) cannot be sold outside the App Store, and understandably so.
The ban on jailbreaking is also on the EFF’s list of grievances, followed by the security claim in Section 6.1, which gives Apple the liberty to approve patches at its own pace. Section 8, which grants Apple the right to “revoke the digital certificate of any of Your Applications at any time,” is mentioned last but the EFF says their list of concerns could continue.
Users asked to sign petition
The EFF links to a separate page where it has set up a form for regular users to sign a petition that hopes to change Apple’s mind. There, it stresses that “Developers shouldn't have to give up their rights to make an iPhone app. App makers should demand better terms, and the customers who love their iPhones should back them.”
Every user has the right to judge these terms for themselves, so we won’t step in to defend either party beyond what we clarified for our readers in the above paragraphs. For what it’s worth, Android users can download the EFF Alerts app right now and use it for free.