Title: 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.<p>I signed up for the beta API here:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.amazon.com&#x2F;public&#x2F;solutions&#x2F;devices&#x2F;echo<p>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&#x27;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?<p>I understand that NDAs have their place, but I don&#x27;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&#x27;s easy to find questions on Stack Overflow where someone asks an innocent question and is immediately shot down by another developer: &quot;This API is embargoed.&quot; I don&#x27;t want to encourage that spirit in the developer community.<p>Have any other developers signed up and gotten this email? If you were in this situation, would you fight it?<p>The email and NDA: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;Sidnicious&#x2F;c0483c73653b3c2c619f
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