Thread: Legality of WM 6.0 Upgrades
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Old 10-31-2008, 10:45 AM
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Re: Legality of WM 6.0 Upgrades
Quote:
Originally Posted by romeroom View Post
Lately I've been asked how "legal" it is to go from WM5 to WM6/6.1 through kitchen magic. I'm not talking a "voiding the warranty" issue. I'm referring to copyright infringement, etc.
Discussed many a time.

The versions the kitchens provide come from freely available downloads, distributed by carriers and/or HTC. Because the files are provided freely, the files are unmodified, and you are licensed to run Windows Mobile on your phone, there isn't an obvious copyright issue.

Interestingly, actual ROMs are an infraction (because they contain modified files).

So, the answer is...the kitchen is legal, the files the kitchens use are legal, installing WM on your WM phone is legal, but building a hybrid ROM is questionable and distributing a hybrid ROM is illegal. Selling a ROM (even an original unmodified one) is unquestionably illegal.

Think of it this way...when you buy a book, it's not illegal to rip out the individual pages and give them away as "pages of book XYZ". It is illegal to reassemble the pages in any fashion other than their original order, to modify their content, to bundle them with other pages, or to call them your own. In the software world, there are additional rules around the "giving away of the pages" because of the non-physical nature and ease of exact reproduction, but I think the analogy is still viable.
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Last edited by gguruusa; 10-31-2008 at 11:03 AM.
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