[Droid Ultra General] tmittelstaedt:
But, nothing said it would be permanently locked, either. In fact I don't think that anything in their sales and marketing addresses

the issue of bootloader locking at all. I doubt they can fall back on a bill of sale as proof of anything.

However, nothing they said implies that I cannot run whatever software I want on the phone. This is going to hinge on reasonable expectation.

Look at it this way. If you buy a PC, and you take it home and discover that you cannot boot Linux on it because the PC was deliberately manufactured to thwart this, and the manufacturer had not prominently disclosed this, you would have a case. Why? Because, Linux boots and runs on millions of other PCs out there. It is a reasonable expectation of any purchaser of a PC that they can use their new PC to run Linux.

For this reason Microsoft arm-twisted all of the PC manufacturers out there when they created Secure Boot. In fact you cannot advertise a PC as being compliant to standard if it does NOT have a way of DISABLING the Secure Boot feature. Many PC manufacturers DID in fact want to be able to sell PCs with Secure Boot on all the time that could not be disabled. But Microsoft denied this. Yes, Microsoft. The company that opposes Linux in every way. They did this because they did not want Secure Boot blowing up in their face due to a class action lawsuit.

First, anyone can file. You can argue that they have zero leg to WIN a suit but not that they can't file. Second, a case like this would be won on what is a reasonable expectation of use of the device.

If you buy a toaster it is a reasonable expectation that it will toast bread. It is unreasonable that when you put the slices in it and push down that the bread will remain untoasted. If the toaster manufacturer sells 1 toaster like this in a batch of millions, it's not grounds for a class action. But if the toaster manufacturer sells a million toasters, they cannot argue that a toaster that does not toast bread is reasonable based on the fact that they might have named the device on the box a "tostee" with a picture of a toaster with untoasted bread in it. That's grounds for a class action.

Today, when the average person buys a phone the question is, what is a reasonable expectation for a consumer? Is it reasonable to expect that it will remain locked to a carrier for the next 20 years? No. The FCC changed that when it required carriers to unlock phones. So that they could be used on different carriers after they were paid off. In fact the FCC wants to see a LOT MORE competition from mvno's. Your going to see this issue of unlocking carrier phones after they are paid off so they can be used on mvno's become a lot bigger in the coming years. And since most phones sold to consumers are carrier-locked, the FCC knows the sources of phones are going to be carriers. Which means those phones are going to have to be portable among carrier to carrier in order for any reasonable competition to happen. Just like phone numbers have been required to be portable. The major carriers have already accepted this and even formed a cell phone carrier association that says any member must allow their phones to be network unlocked after they are paid off.

And, when the day comes that the average person buys a carrier phone and expects that after a year they can take it to a competitor, then it will be a reasonable expectation for all cell phones to be network unlockable.

And that's where bootlocks might be affected.

Bootlocking can interfere with the ability of a consumer to use a phone on a mvno. If a phone cannot be rooted and cannot have alternative firmware flashed to it, then for some models at least, there's not clean portability. I have 2 models (which I won't get into here) that have been network unlocked by the carrier that sold them that have issues on an mvno. An alternative firmware load would likely solve those issues. If this was 10 years in the future then I think the litmus test for a reasonable expectation that I can fix my phones to work on a mvno would be met. Bootlocking without ever supplying the unlock code flies in the face of that.

Hey, back the truck up, buddy. I'm a customer of his, I bought Sunshine, have you?

I am not saying development of Sunshine was the wrong choice for today. But it is a convenient hook to show an example of why PERVERSION in technology can really waste a lot of time. This business of withholding bootlock codes from customers on paid-up phones is ethically and morally wrong, it is perversion. You know it otherwise you wouldn't be defending jcase. The example, which you obviously missed here, is that the issue of bootlocks is a political/business issue, it is not a software/technology issue. From Motorola's own mouth - do I have to cite it - they say bootlocks are supposed to HELP the consumer. they DO NOT SAY that MANDATORY bootlocks are a good thing. So it's pretty obvious where the fault is - the carriers.

Sunshine is an example of being forced to waste a lot of time righting a wrong instead of using that time to go out and do positive things to build the modding community. You seem to be arguing that we should be ENCOURAGING mandatory bootlocks so that people like jcase can develop Sunshine.

The last technology class action I was a member of that I can recall was the class action filed against Panasonic when they sold CDROM writers with defective components in them that failed quite rapidly. And it took about a decade from when Panasonic did that before a class action was filed. I had one of those defective readers in fact, and it did fail just after the short warranty ended. Panasonic was forced to send new readers to all members of the class. I got one. No, I don't think it works like you describe in tech. Remember these are attorneys we are talking about, their extent of technical knowledge is that the switch has to be pointing down to turn the lights off in the room, and sometimes they can't even get that far.

Total rubbish. All the court has to do is order Motorola to open the bootlocker database so anyone can request an unlock code for their phone that is over a year old (or whatever timeframe is reasonable) Cost to Motorola, $0.00 No need to refund, no need to send out new phones. Phones can then be easily bootloader unlocked which would facilitate network unlocking which the carriers are already required to do anyway.

I think it would probably take judge about 20 seconds to come to that conclusion. Motorola would have an impossible argument to make that keeping the bootlocker database closed would benefit the customers who are demanding the bootlocker database be accessible. And the carriers would have an equally impossible argument to make that keeping the bootlocker database closed is mandatory when it can easily be shown that doing so circumvents the very carriers promises that phones will be network unlockable as per the FCC requirements and their own promises to their trade association. And it can be easily shown the consumer is taking financial harm when they cannot fix problems taking their carrier-unlocked phones to a mvno when they cannot bootloader unlock the phone.

This one is a bang shot.