Re: [Rubycocoa-talk] Ruby on the iPhone?

[Jason F. <ja...@th...>]

On Mar 10, 2009, at 7:12 PM, Steven Arnold wrote:
> I read the Apple iPhone SDK EULA at http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/iphone.pdf
>  and I do not see anything in it that suggests that only Apple-
> provided tools may be used to create iPhone apps.  In fact, I don't
> even see anything that says you may only distribute an iPhone app via
> the iTunes App Store.  If I'm missing some language in the EULA,
> please correct me.

That document appears to be a user-level agreement; it seems to have  
nothing to do with the SDK.  Also note that the license to which you  
agree when downloading the SDK is *much* different than the legal  
contract you must sign to become a registered developer (and thus able  
to submit apps to the store).  The developer contract has some  
language that can be interpreted to mean you cannot use any code  
execution mechanism not explicitly supported by Apple (see below).


> My take: there is nothing in the EULA to prevent a tool that creates
> an iPhone app via Ruby.  While such a tool could possibly be used for
> "illegitimate" purposes (e.g. an app for use on jailbroken devices),
> let's not forget that ALL so-called illegitimate apps that exist today
> were created using XCode and Objective-C.  Allowing iPhone apps to be
> created using Ruby would not add any capability for illegitimate
> activity that does not already exist today.

I think you'll find the bigger problem is that no RubyCocoa.framework  
exists in the iPhone SDK.  So you might be able to get an app to  
compile and even run using Ruby in the simulator, but you'll have a  
lot more work to do if you expect to run it on a device.  You'd have  
to compile Ruby for ARM, along with RubyCocoa, and get those working  
first.  Then you have the potential legal hurdle as I mentioned in the  
preceding note.

Bottom line, it just isn't worth trying to write an iPhone app using  
Ruby at this time.  You can use Ruby as a tool in your build  
processes, or to generate Obj-C code, or otherwise, but implementing  
your program in Ruby is just not a wise idea.


Best of luck,

Jason