[nathanhammond]

The future of unofficial Twitter clients might just be fully open-source code. Twitter can't stop every determined individual from creating their own application if the code is out there publicly. And with Twitter possibly cutting people off I wouldn't be surprised to see some clients become open source as they hit their cap. The question simply becomes how high the bar becomes for building your own personal Twitter application.

Actually, that would be a rather scary end-game for Twitter: completely losing control of their delivery platform.

[tlrobinson]

You would't even need to open source it, just have a field to enter your developer key.

[riobard]

Why would 3rd party Twitter client developers want to open-source their apps? Just to hurt Twitter at their own financial cost?

[kristianc]

Developers might arrive at a point where there is no financial incentive in maintaining a 3rd party Twitter app anyway.

[kalleboo]

On iOS, you need to pay Apple $99 to install custom software on your own device. That would be a significant hurdle.