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It's simple, what Apple should have done is:
1) Used EPUB 3
or
2) If using EPUB 3 was not possible because it lacked some functionality (which I highly doubt, by the way) they should have released a document saying:
We are using this format named "ibook" it will differ from epub 3 in so and so ways, because epub 3 does not allow us to do such and such. Publish a specification for the extensions so that they can be used by other people without needing reverse engineering. Work with the IDPF to get their extensions standardised in the future.
That is the bare minimum they needed to do. Really, they should also have built some graceful degradation into their extensions so that .ibook could be used with epub 3 readers without too much loss of functionality.
That is how you support an open specification, while still retaining the ability to innovate.
Instead they chose to take whatever they needed from a community standard, build undocumented, proprietary extensions on top of it and not give a hoot for interoperability. That is parasitic behavior, pure and simple.
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