“We are willing to pay $100,000 USD and make it freely available with the owner’s approval and all the credits given to the creator. We will also give you control of a domain and release it on Wednesday night at 12:00am”.
The generous people behind the offer remain unknown and the provided contact e-mail address does not provide a serious clue either. Therefore, there are three ways to go about this announcement.
First of all, let’s assume the offer is a genuine one and there are people willing to give away the sum. If so, AT&T execs are in for another round of headaches, as there are few legal ways to counter the initiative. It may be illegal in the US to charge people for unlocking their iPhones or for the instructions needed to achieve such a goal. Then again, the software is supposed to be distributed for free, so the situation changes dramatically.
As for who may be behind the offer, you may take your guess, starting from “no more restrictions” activists to rival telecom companies who would see AT&T left without its nowadays star product.
Then again, the offer may be just AT&T’s way to lure software developers out in the open and then have the court prevent them from releasing their software.
Last but not least, it could be just a bogus announcement made up so it could get some media attention. Well, congratulations, it did.