I signed up to write apps for my Amazon Echo, Amazon sent me an NDA

85 points

11 years ago

I ordered an Amazon Echo as soon as it was announced. Privacy concerns aside, a device like this could be the perfect UI for a smart home. My main interest in the Echo was (and remains) developing for it. Could I ask it about the status of my backups? Turn on lights and air conditioning? Use it to verbally send email while cooking? The possibilities were enticing.

I signed up for the beta API here:

https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/devices/echo

This week I got the below email. It promises access, but only if I agree to an NDA. I was planning to do all of my development on GitHub, permissively licensed (or public domain), and of course I'd want to get feedback and ideas from friends and other developers. It also makes me question how friendly the Echo will be to hackers and open development in the future — do I really want to invest my time in it?

I understand that NDAs have their place, but I don't think this is one. I have experience developing for Apple devices, where any information relating to prerelease OSs is covered by NDA, and it's easy to find questions on Stack Overflow where someone asks an innocent question and is immediately shot down by another developer: "This API is embargoed." I don't want to encourage that spirit in the developer community.

Have any other developers signed up and gotten this email? If you were in this situation, would you fight it?

The email and NDA: https://gist.github.com/Sidnicious/c0483c73653b3c2c619f

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