In an example of rolling over in the name of “good relationships,” the Pre Dev Wiki has shut down their tethering page because “Sprint could get angry.” This is in stark contrast with iPhone devs who couldn’t give two squirts about “good relationships” and instead produce interesting technical content including unlocked phones.

“We have been politely cautioned by Palm that any discussion of tethering during the Sprint exclusivity period (and perhaps beyond—we don’t know yet) will probably cause Sprint to complain to Palm, and if that happened then Palm would be forced to react against the people running the IRC channel and this wiki.

We want to retain a good relationship with Palm, hence we are not allowing discussion of tethering on the IRC channel, or in this wiki.

Note that Sprint does not have a plan available for use with the Pre which allows tethering under the Terms Of Service.

Once there is a version of the Pre available for a carrier that does allow tethering, or an unlocked GSM version, then we may be able to change this policy.”

Interestingly, this was only “discussion” of Pre tethering and not actual tethering instructions, a delightful chilling effect that I suspect will backfire once the same folks who were working on the Dev Wiki move to somewhere more conducive to intellectual inquiry like this, which I put up in about five minutes.

I don’t want to get all “freedom of speech” on this but the futility of the action – by both Palm and the devs – is touching. WebOS is now hackable and they’re already working on homebrew software. It will literally be a matter of two or three weeks before someone figures out tethering and then all that stands between Pre owners and the Interwebs is Sprint’s 5GB cap on “unlimited” Internet. Someone will do it and now it’s not the Pre Dev Wiki. They’ve frightened themselves out of relevance.

UPDATE – Just noticed the Dev wiki’s motto: “Let’s open this beast up.” Not so much, it seems.