I agree that the new Apple license is very strict. But the truth is that it’s so strict that they can’t possibly enforce it as written–or nearly half of the top games on iPhone would need to be kicked out of the store.
Also, since C++ is a permitted language, could you potentially release Panda3d as a C+±only engine? Or is it too tightly integrated with Python to be able to disable that integration?
Technically even that would be against the rules (“no compatibility layer”). But that part of the rules is simply insane, and frankly impossible to enforce entirely.
Yes you could pick a particular engine and exclude it (using “anti-virus”-like signature techniques, for example), but you’re not going to get every developer to completely rewrite every game for iPhone that exists on other platforms. So everyone will have a compatibility layer for their own games.
But if the Python integration is too tightly bound in with the rest, then I guess you’re right–in that I personally wouldn’t want the extra overhead of a Python interpreter in my iPhone game (or on Android).
Too bad Panda 3d doesn’t use Lua instead. Much lower overhead, and faster to boot.