[Haskell] Re: [Haskell-cafe] Work on Video Games in Haskell

[Edward Kmett]

On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 5:51 AM, Ryan Trinkle
<ryan.trinkle at ipwnstudios.com>wrote:

> Hi guys,
>
> I don't think this licensing issue will be a problem for us.  It's not
> clear to me that our game violates this new term, and we certainly don't
> violate any of the principles Steve Jobs used to justify it.  If Apple wants
> to reject our app, they already have a variety of excuses at their disposal,
> as they've demonstrated on many occasions.  Frankly, it'd be their loss;
> Android is now the fastest-growing smartphone market, and we'll be more than
> happy to focus on it (and other friendlier markets) if Apple's not
> interested in having our product on their platform.
>

Steve Jobs has been quite clear that apps written in other languages, even
ones that are interpreted in, compiles down to or otherwise generate
objective c source code, don't comply with the changes in section 3.3.1 of
their license, so I'm not sure that you have much of a case.

> “We’ve been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and
> the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress
> of the platform.”
>
Read more:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/10/steve-jobs-responds-to-iphone-sdk-complaints-intermediate-layers-produce-sub-standard-apps/#ixzz0p3gfoNZI

Haskell definitely qualifies as an 'intermediate layer', just like
MonoTouch, and just like the Flash-to-Objective-C compiler that provoked the
original response from Apple.

http://www.taoeffect.com/blog/2010/04/steve-jobs-response-a-brief-followup/

Heck, even libraries that may contain scripting and modeling utilities like
Unity3d are in jeopardy, due to this cockamamie restriction, which threatens
to send the art of level design and game programming for the iphone
technologically clear back into the early 90s, though at least there they
appear to be treading lightly, since Unity has been useful in providing the
iphone with a lot of high end content.

http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/7408/is-unity3d-banned-by-new-apple-sdk-licence

But, there are other numerous discussions floating around in the blogosphere
involving previously approved applications written in scheme (even compiled
via objective c), c#, or other middleware languages having their
applications removed from the app store.

So, sadly, I think your chances of shipping your a title written in Haskell
on the iPhone are shot to hell.

-Edward Kmett
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