[T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge Guides, News, & Di] MechaMorph:
You can take my thoughts as they are or you can ignore them as Debbie Downer. I don't care. Just let it be known that while I may not be a lawyer I did work in the US Federal Court system supporting President appointed Judges. So I learned quite a bit about this stuff because I saw quite a few interesting cases and asked the Judges a lot of questions. For example there was one case I talked to a Judge about and it was a lawsuit against RIM. The crux of the case was "what is an e-mail?" So both sides were defining what e-mail is and it wasn't pretty. So how do you define what an e-mail is? ;)

1. They are strictly speaking about you cannot decompile the ROM or the apps that are on the device. Source code like TouchWiz is proprietary and protected. This also covers apps like T-Mobile's app and anything else pre-installed or installed by the user. Exceptions would be apps that are covered by things like GPL. So in the past I developed a firewall app for Android. It was fully open source under GPLv2. You can decompile the app if you so desired. You can also go download the code, compile it, and install it. What you can't do is take an app like the T-Mobile app, decompile it, modify it to do whatever, recompile, and install.

Now Android isn't GPL. Android is Apache which has very specific differences compared to GPL. With Apache you don't have to release the source code, thus why you can't compile a TouchWiz based ROM for a Galaxy device from source. The Linux kernel is GPL which is why the source code is released. However, nothing in the GPL says you are guaranteed to be able to modify the device using said source code.

2. Content and applications refer to anything that can be installed without modifying the underlying ROM. 3rd party content like Xposed modifies the framework which changes the ROM which in turn breaks item 3.

3. You aren't modifying the device by installing apps. You aren't changing the underlying functionality like you can do with a custom ROM or something like Xposed. You have a device that contains radios, a screen, and other devices (GPS, accelerometer, etc). Installing an app doesn't change that. The apps access device functionality through APIs. Now the app may use said device differently then another app but underneath it all communication with the device is still using the same APIs. For example a Camera app versus a Barcode reading app. Both access the camera APIs but they do different things.

However, you are modifying the device by using a custom ROM or Xposed. In that case you're either replacing the stock ROM entirely or modifying the stock ROM which requires pieces to be decompiled which is breaks item 1.

Technically speaking (and we all know this) we aren't supposed to unlock the bootloader and load up Xposed or a custom ROM as it voids the warranty. However, T-Mobile (and generally Sprint) over look this provided people don't start doing stupid stuff (for example using T-Mobile as your ISP by tethering your home computers and eating up a ton of bandwidth). There is no guarantee here though. While they have allowed unlockable bootloaders they also have verbiage in the T&C to protect themselves:

Basically that states T-Mobile or the OEM can start locking bootloaders anytime they want.

This is why I think going after T-Mobile in a class action is a foolish idea. As of right now it appears Legere and T-Mobile is honestly trying to get Samsung to unlock the bootloader. If the LG G5 and HTC 10 have unlockable bootloaders then we don't want to piss off T-Mobile. By pissing them off you run the risk of making them say screw it and follow in the steps of Verizon and AT&T. The Android rooting and development community is a teeny tiny insignificant amount of people. That insignificant amount of people doesn't feed T-Mobile. T-Mobile allowing unlockable bootloaders feeds the Android community. So let's not bite the hand that feeds us.