Earlier this week my Automattic colleagues and Effigent released WordPress for iPhone and iPod Touch. Now, the source is also available and Trac is set up for reporting bugs and participating in development!
I’ve tried it on my iPod Touch. They’ve done a great job! And are urgently working on fixing the worse bugs.
It’s already in the top 50 free apps.
Development has been managed by Raanan Bar-Cohen and the app is designed by Matt Thomas.
WordPress for iPhone has the clean Matt aesthetic1, though I expect the iPhone SDK probably doesn’t allow much deviation from clean simplicity.
There is quite some stink up about whether or not we are breaking Apple’s iPhone development NDA by our application being open source, and speculation that Apple will sue us.
I was curious about the “Open Source” proclamation at the top of its non-App-Store webpage.
WordPress for iPhone is in the App Store. WordPress for iPhone’s Application Description has always stated it’s open source. Someone at Apple approved “WordPress for iPhone Open Source”.
Although it makes for a great story and gives us freetards reason to bang our chests, my thought is Apple has it’s anti-open source clause in the agreement to cover their butts from their code being “poisoned” by a viral license. Butt covered, let the open source applications flow, but no squirting.
- His “field notes“ [↩]
You’d better thank your lucky stars the license you are using is the GPL version 2, not the GPL version 3.
The way the iPhone locks down the software by only running signed code is not too dissimilar from Tivoisation. Though we can buy the hardware, and download the source code of the app that runs on it, because it will only run Apple-dictated signed copies of the code produced, our Four Freedoms have been compromised.
A simple coder like myself can download the source, make a few improvements to the software, but cannot run the software that I have made, because of these digital restrictions.
I wish that Automattic stayed away from the iPhone for these reasons, instead of simply supporting whatever technology Matt thinks is the latest and greatest. Tip: He’s not right all the time.
We loved the application and wrote about it on a couple of occasions, http://thenorthamericanjournal.com/?p=47 this is great , a couple of tweaks to come but for us publishing both The North American Journal and BlackBerry Edge we will use this as much as we are using our PC’s.
Jeremy, you’re comment reminds me of something I would have written not that many years ago. They say age mellows and that protesting is an activity for youth. I don’t know if that is it, or if experience just leads you to be willing to compromise more and be more solution focused.
Although, I’m best at pointing out problems and bugs, my mantra of late has been “Don’t give people problems, give them solutions.”
You suggest that the team created WordPress for iPhone client because of Matt’s desire. Although encouraging, I don’t think had much involvement in the project. The result is already clear, many iPhone customers are also WordPress members, and people are really excited for our participation!
Different messages work for different audiences, so do keep up the good fight!