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

[Steven A. <st...@ar...>]

Disclaimer: IANAL, and for that reason this will be my last post on  
the legal side of this issue.  My reading of the iPhone SDK agreement  
below is my opinion only.

Reading the SDK agreement at http://developer.apple.com/iphone/download.action?path=/iphone/iphone_sdk_for_iphone_os_2.2.1__9m2621a__final/iphone_sdk_agt_ea0495.pdf 
, I can see how the language might be interpreted to mean that you  
can't distribute an app except through the App Store, although even  
that (section 3.3.3) seems to apply only if you "enable additional  
features or functionality" beyond that of a normal app, such as e.g.  
allowing use of another carrier.

I see nothing at all prohibiting anyone from using tools other than  
XCode to write iPhone apps.  The agreement is very clear that any  
attempt to break the DRM of Apple is not allowed, but that is not what  
a Ruby->iPhone compiler would be intended to do, any more than the  
Objective-C compiler which is part of gcc -- a GPL-based app --  
intends to do that.

On Mar 10, 2009, at 8:51 PM, Jason Foreman wrote:

> 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.

We agree it is not feasible now to write an iPhone app in Ruby.  In  
order to do that, it does seem you'd need a parser and compiler that  
compiles to the ARM infrastructure.  I started the thread because I  
was wondering if there was any easier way to do this.  My current  
feeling is that no, there is not.

Having said that, in a world where some people begin projects like  
WINE, which attempt a complete re-implementation of Win32, this does  
not seem like an insurmountable goal -- merely a difficult one.   
RubyCocoa itself is a daring idea which I'm sure took quite a bit of  
effort to implement.  I wouldn't expect a Ruby-iPhone kit to be any  
easier.

steven