Can someone explain the Hard-SPL Licensing?

[Mutiny32]

Originally Posted by lawmangrant

The licensing should be free to everyone, the reason for the licensing server is that the mass unlockers will have to pay for the unlocking now.

Me, I have my 1 TP2 and well, I will only unlock that, so that does not concern me at all.

And I am ok with them protecting their product.

As I understand it, the Hard-SPL is a modified manufacturer bootloader. Since it was developed by the manufacturer, unless explicitly licensed under a license like the Apache/GPL/BSD, nobody can re-license nor charge for the code.

Modification cannot be used as justification, as it is a derivative work of the original copyrighted code.

Reverse-engineering is also covered under this same concept to a certain extent. If the code is reverse-engineered by inference, it cannot be redistributed if original code methods are used and the rest of the pieces filled in, as that is also considered derivative.

Edit: but it's a moot point, as it's already an illegal redistribution of HTC's code. HTC lets the community do so because the testing of pre-release code is vital to the development of better software.