There’s no marriage of Panda3D and Python. It should be possible to write a C++ iPhone app using Panda3D. It’s not entirely clear to me whether this falls under the definition of using a “compatibility layer” (since Panda is open source, you can copy the entire library into your application source code folder–and then it becomes part of your application itself, not a separate layer).
That said, I’ve used Python to develop experimental apps for the iPhone, and it works fine, from a technical standpoint. But this has been hashed to death: Apple’s license is not about technical restrictions, it’s about market share.
Whether it’s realistic for Apple to eliminate nearly half of the top games in the App store is also kind of beside the point. It appears that Apple thinks this is a worthwhile sacrifice for their own business needs, and they might well be right.
Whether this new agreement is enforceable in practice or not is irrelevant for the purposes of declaring Panda3D’s iPhone support. If developing for iPhone using Panda3D would violate Apple’s developer agreement, then Panda3D cannot provide (legitimate) iPhone support.
Of course, we can continue to provide illegitimate iPhone support. That’s less exciting to developers, of course.
David