iOS 7 Untethered Jailbreak Being Forced Out with Crowdfunded Reward

The Device Freedom Prize, a crowdsourced effort to reward the first developer who releases an open source iOS 7 jailbreak, is now accepting donations. The initiative is likely to speed up the launch of the first untethered jailbreak for iOS 7.

Judging the binaries will be Chris Maury (prize proposer and accessibility advocate), Cory Doctorow (co-editor of Boing Boing, author, and DMCA activist), iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens, and Biella Coleman (professor and author of Coding Freedom). The organizers say the jailbreak must work for multiple iPhone models (4S, 5, 5c, 5s) and support the latest version of iOS (7.0.4). The jailbreak must be untethered and shouldn’t pose problems to “the average user.” Once a jailbreak meets these criteria, it will be publicly released and available free of charge under one of the OSI-approved licenses. The reason behind the effort is not to get people to jailbreak their iOS devices, but rather to support disabled users who can enhance the functionality of their iPhones and iPads for their needs.

The Device Freedom Prize explains, “We strongly believe that users should have the freedom to control their devices. We wanted an open source jailbreak for iOS 7, giving users the capability to install what they want on their own devices and the ability to audit the code they're using to do so.” “Jailbreaking is also critical to ensuring that the disabled are able to use their mobile devices as easily as possible. So we started a prize for the first people who can do it.” 

Chris Maury offers a couple of examples of how the disabled can benefit from an iOS jailbreak, saying that “those with motor disabilities can change the default gestures to make apps easier to navigate [while] those with vision issues can adjusting the hue of the display to reduce eye-strain using apps like f.lux.” At the time of this writing, donors had pledged around $10,000, which roughly translates into €7,270, or £6,130.

Device Freedom Prize announcement
Image credits to isios7jailbrokenyet.com

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