Speaking of kids with Macs, by now you've probably heard of the plight of Finlay Dobbie, a gifted developer who was working on the Darwin open source guts of Mac OS X. Indeed, apparently Finlay even managed to isolate and help fix a particular PPP hanging bug that had been plaguing some Mac users, and seemed to be well on his way to becoming a vital contributor to the continuing development of Apple's next-generation operating system. Unfortunately, as faithful viewer William Bonde informed us, Finlay forgot to lie about his age.

See, Finlay's only fifteen years old, and as far as Apple Corporate is concerned, that's a real problem from a legal perspective. As a minor, Finlay can't technically commit to legal agreements such as the Non-Disclosure Agreement required for enrollment in the Apple Developer Connection. According to lawyer Gene Riccoboni as quoted in a Wired article about this fracas, "any contract entered into with a minor is voidable" and can "unilaterally be rescinded." In other words, Finlay could sign the NDA, get access to confidential Apple intellectual property, post it for all the world to see, and Apple would have no way to hold him legally liable for the act. Not that we're implying that Finlay would ever do such a thing, of course-- he looks like a nice guy. Unfortunately, Apple is a public company accountable to its shareholders, and therefore generally has to cover its butt six ways from Sunday when it comes to legal stuff like this.

Sadly, even if it basically has no choice about what it needs to do, Apple's legal department certainly has a real knack for finding the most hamfisted PR-nightmare ways of going about its business. Finlay woke up one day to find his ADC account terminated, sans notification. When he dug around to find out why, he got what amounted to a form letter telling him that since he was a minor, his account was "inactivated" and "no refund or partial refund of any ADC annual fee will be made for any reason." Ain't that sweet? Just as the way in which Apple abruptly shut down MacCards a couple of years ago gave the company a PR black eye among Mac fans and evangelists, Finlay's sudden booting from the ADC for being fifteen just makes it look like Apple hates kids-- especially geek-god kids who help fix Apple's own bugs. Yeah, that's just the sort of image that'll attract young, eager developers to the platform in droves.

We understand that Apple Legal occasionally has to take certain unpopular actions to protect the company; we just think that everybody (yes, folks, even the shareholders!) would be a lot better off if the lawyers showed a little bit of consideration when they find themselves compelled to do something unfortunate to people who are obviously fans of the platform. Someone could have called Finlay and explained the situation to him instead of just shutting out the lights. For that matter, since the guy's only working on Darwin anyway (open source presumably means no NDA required), isn't there a way that he can continue to contribute without needing to be a full-fledged ADC member? Take it a step further; wouldn't it be neat (and in line with Apple's alleged unwavering commitment to education) if the company had a kid-friendly developer program level sans NDA and other legal entanglements which would provide a level of support and training without giving access to trade secrets?

No, we don't know all the legal issues involved here, so maybe none of these wacky ideas is really feasible without exposing the company to certain unacceptable legal risks. But we're pretty sure that someone could at least have contacted Finlay to explain the situation with his account without Cupertino disappearing into the earth's crust.