August 20, 2008 2:54 PM PDT
Copy-and-paste comes to the iPhone...and it's open source
I was very excited to see on OStatic that OpenClip, an open-source copy-and-paste application for the iPhone, is out.
In case you needed proof in a divine being....
Could Apple shut it down, as it has with other applications that it doesn't like? Well, as OStatic points out, OpenClip "uses shared space, outside the common resource space that Apple's SDK protects, to facilitate copy and paste." So maybe it's on firm legal territory.
I wouldn't want to put myself up against Apple's legal team, however, which is why making the application open source makes a lot of sense. The code is loose: how is Apple supposed to put it back in its cage?
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is chief operating officer at Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux operating system. Prior to Canonical, Matt was general manager of the Americas division and vice president of business development at Alfresco, an open-source applications company. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
