Jailbreaking Prohibited by New iPhone Developer Agreement

Anyone who has any hopes that Apple might eventually loosen its grip on the iPhone can stop holding their breath. A new version of the "iPhone Developer Program License Agreement" goes so far as to prohibit jailbreaking.

As first noted by Ars, the relevant clauses in the new agreement state:

(e) You will not, through use of the Apple Software, services or otherwise, create any Application or other program that would disable, hack or otherwise interfere with the Security Solution, or any security, digital signing, digital rights management, verification or authentication mechanisms implemented in or by the iPhone operating system software, iPod touch operating system software, this Apple Software, any services or other Apple software or technology, or enable others to do so; and

(f) Applications developed using the Apple Software may only be distributed if selected by Apple (in its sole discretion) for distribution via the App Store or for limited distribution on Registered Devices (ad hoc distribution) as contemplated in this Agreement.

Jailbreaking allows users to install apps not approved by Apple (such as from stores like the Cydia Store), and it also allows unlocking, but it could have legitimate uses as well, as it allows access to the root of the iPhone OS.

Now, will this stop people like the iPhone Dev Team? No. Unless Apple can determine who exactly those people are and prevent them, as well as developers of jailbroken apps, from getting future releases of the SDK.

Of course, I'd expect those groups to be able to work around that anyway.