James G. Speth’s recently introduced iCommune software has been pulled from distribution after the software’s author received a request from Apple asking him to stop. The details have been reported by News.com.
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Designed as a plug-in for Apple’s iTunes MP3 player software, iCommune enables iTunes users to share music libraries with one another. iCommune provides a way for you to download or stream music that other people have made available, as well.
Available until this week as a public beta, iCommune has been taken offline after Speth received a “Notice of Breach and Termination of License” letter from Apple. Speth explained on his Web site that iCommune depends on the Device Plug-In Application Programming Interface (API) — a piece of technology that Apple itself makes available to third party developers to add support for hardware-based MP3 players. News.com’s Matthew Broersma and Ian Fried report that Speth’s violation came when he used that API to create iCommune.
Speth himself planned to expand iCommune’s capabilities to include support for Rendezvous, Apple’s zero-configuration networking technology, along with support for iChat, Apple’s instant messaging software. As it stands now, however, Speth may try to rework the software without dependency Apple’s intellectual property. He admitted that iCommune “grew beyond the scope” of what he had originally intended.