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Comment by jascination | Hacker News Reader

You would still need Xcode / an apple developer account/ provisioning profiles etc etc etc all through Apple to develop iOS apps though, so with that there's potential for some apple => dev agreement.

Not saying it's good or bad, just that the distribution channel might change but that doesn't mean the development tools will

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That's not the rub though.

I imagine that, as sideloading becomes much more commonplace due to the DMA, community-led FOSS iOS SDKs will pop up that cut all dependency from Apple.

That's not where they get you, however. Apple could very well enforce IPAs to be notarized before being installable by an end-user. They could make a web form for the developer to upload the compiled binary. The form would be contract-gated. That's how, even when assuming a fully Apple-independent dev environment, they could still bind you to their will.

This kind of exists in the iOS side loading world. It’s called TrollStore and it uses a CoreKit vulnerability to trick your side loaded app from expiring by running a spoof-server. It also bypasses the 3 app limit for non-developers. It’s open-source, but Apple patched it on newer iOS versions.

by "FOSS SDK" I meant an equivalent to XCode, libs and headers, scripts, etc. Not the signing stuff.

I mean, you're still running on Apple's OS right? So, unless Apple gets forced to open up their OS, all apps, side loaded or otherwise, depend on Apple Licensed software. Licensed software that Apple is free to set whatever terms they wish.

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