[Acer Iconia A500] ezterry:
What Thor doesn’t do is play by the rules, thus making all his work either (a) unfit for XDA or (b) in outright violation of copyright without a reasonable fair use exception.

Regarding A:

See the forum rules:

http://xdaforums.com/announcement.php?a=81

breaking this one is very unair to all devs (regardless of the device they are working on) as may devs are donating bandwidth and time to various part of android; and don't get the ability to force users to pay.

In Thor's case he decided to put an ad service on a shortened URL to his free github account (or potentially free I don't know if Thor pays github for the privilege of private repositories or not)

Regarding B:

While Thor was putting the device tree out in the public, this still contained a pre-built kernel.

The Linux/Android kernel is licensed under GPLv2 and thus must always have its source code available: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html

This goes for stock roms as well; but the stock acer kernel's code is available http://support.acer.com/us/en/product/default.aspx?tab=4&modelId=3851

Interesting that the code Thor had open if copied from another android device would have been under apache2 Not GPL (and if not under whatever license Thor him self decided to release it under) and thus need not have been released if Thor opted not to.

Opensource works best when all copies remain open allowing developers to add to the source what they can to improve it. GPL and Apache2 licenses have a different stance on this however:

GPL enforces this by only allowing you to distribute modified copies if the source code is made available; and does not allow you to change the license. XDA while has a lax policy about wares (allowing for free use where the author is not loosing income) they have decided not to have a lax policy on the GPL, meaning you are free to use GPL binaries but must indicate where the source code came from.

Apache2 has no enforcement; it encourages the open behavior but has no enforcement; since modified versions can be distributed with or without source; and in various situations the license can be changed; to either a more restrictive open license such as the GPLv3 or a more closed license that prohibits the modified source from being distributed. While XDA encourages sharing here.. they will not enforce it.

Reality is; if Thor put a quick note about where to find the kernel source and (or a link to the source if he modified it) and removed the ad link, returning it back to the direct link to github for the git repo there would have been no problem and development would have continued.

Edit; you will find in reply to the above the following very wrong statement:

1) I do release exactly how to get the source code to all kernels I build, usually its in the post with the official downloads.

2) git is easy to maintain, particularly if you are using git for revision control, and for kernels I do to ensure I can cherry-pick patches, this allows for a easy system of applying the upstream patches while having the added benifit of keeping the author for each patch credited.

3) as you are obviously not aware I maintain a gingerbread build for the dream sapphire with building instructions. And many git repos.

In addition to this you seem to have missed the core goals of xda: a place where *Developers* (not users) are to be able to discuss and share information on the devices tthey are hacking. Without this the original android phone the HTC Dream would not be what it is today, nor the cyanogenmod project the common name it is. Last Linux its self is only what it is because people wasted time sharing code.

Mind you all I ask is OSS licences be upheld to the best effort of the distributor, keeping with the intent of the original authors. (If you are in strong belief of copyright this is like any other copyright agreement, if you think copyright is too strong or otherwise is not optimal well here are the options to provide more freedom, and its important to honor that the authors gave you the ability to modify their work, much more than worrying about a 10 to 30 day delay in ICS.)

Finally this netham45 is contradicts his earlier statements when Acer had not yet released code.

(I add this because replies such as this I find much more worrisome than Thor's actual actions.)