[coldtea]

>That setup doesn't make any sense to me. Either its an open program or a closed program.

Or it's something in between. Few things in life are or have to be binary -- that's a very CS mindset.

Apple wants to start it as closed, so they have full discretion as to what "others" they will accept (since they've already said they're not just accepting anybody).

This helps them build up their teams and infrastructure for it with the fewer, pre-selected, people, and gives them time to expand (or even evaluate if they need expanding to fully open anyway, perhaps a smaller/controlled list works well enough too).

At the same time, the "we might accept non-invited third parties" gives them the opportunity not to miss out on any important unexpected collaborators / bugs.