Quote:
Originally Posted by stinkbud
The reason for the C&D as far as I understood was that some apps included in the offending ROMS were not open source. They MAY be available for free out there, but since they are not open, then Google had to put the kibosh on them.
|
What it is, is that several parts of the android source are indeed not open source. the google apps for example. These are closed source apps that google developed to make the android experience 'good' out of the box. Those who are part of the android open source handset alliance are allowed to distribute these apps with their phones. As google did not intend the vogue and other third party phones to run android and htc did not 'licence' the vogue etc for the alliance, that's where the problem begins.
Basically the move of removing these apps is a 'cover our butt' mentality. I believe in open and closed source and did not realize in the past that it would ever be a problem. We still want to have android on our vogues we just have to do it the 'right' way.
The last thing any of us dev's need is c&d letters. You'll notice that releases have totally slowed down in the Dream forums as well while this is sorted out.
There will still be builds out that do no included the google apps. I know it really cripples android for day to day use, however there is a movement to replace all of the closed source apps with alternative 'open source' ones. As soon as this is finalized those will be included in the builds.