Apple Has (Partly) Lifted the NDA for Beta Releases

With the release of the beta versions of iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite at WWDC 2014 yesterday, Apple has also updated the legal agreements for registered iOS and Mac developers. Among other changes, Apple has added the following sentence to section “10.1 Information Deemed Apple Confidential” of the iOS Developer Program License Agreement:

Further, Apple agrees that You will not be bound by the foregoing confidentiality terms with regard to technical information about pre-release Apple Software and services disclosed by Apple at WWDC (Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference), except that You may not post screen shots, write public reviews or redistribute any pre-release Apple Software or services.

I am not a lawyer, but if I am reading this correctly, it means that beta version of the operating systems and SDKs are still under NDA, but Apple allows developers to discuss new APIs and features that have been introduced at WWDC in public. That should cover pretty much all the new stuff in iOS 8, Yosemite and the Developer Tools.

We’re still not allowed to post screen shots (the rumor sites will do that anyway) and I am not sure what qualifies as a “public review”. Am I not allowed to post my opinion about a new API or is that solely meant to prevent full reviews of the entire OS before the public release? Anyway, it’s certainly better than before.