[G1 Android Development] testing567:
First of all, let me say that I believe users doooshty and jjcd51590 has a great idea in this thread about remaking all the Google closed source apps form scratch in this thread.

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=564263

However this has the obvious disadvantage that this could only help us at sometime in the future when all the new non Google apps are fully developed and stable. I have an idea that can help save the rom dev community immediately and it's 100% legal. (At least I think it is. Anyone on here a lawyer?)

This closed source app situation got me thinking about other programs I've used on my PC in which the legality of it was questionable; specifically PlayStation emulators. If you ever installed one you know that they come missing important files (the bios) that are needed for it to run because it is illegal for them to be distributed by anyone except Sony. You are left to obtain these files on your own and complete the program yourself. The legal way to obtain these missing files is to download them directly off your own personal PlayStation. This has many similarities to the current situation.

Only members of the Open Handset Alliance can legally distribute the Google closed source apps. Unfortunately, Cyanogen is not a member of this group. Neither is any other dev on this site. However, HTC is. HTC publicly distributes the Official rom for the Dev Phone and the Google I/O phone, which legally contains all the Google closed source apps.

http://www.htc.com/www/support/android/adp.html#s3

http://www.htc.com/www/support/android/google-io-device.html

My idea is for all rooted users to store the official Android release from HTC on there SD card in the same way you need to get the bios file for the emulator. Then perhaps someone (maybe Cyanogen) could create a new recovery image that can processes scripts in the update.zip files that can pull individual apk files from the HTC_Official.zip so the closed source apps don't have to be included in the custom rom itself. Allowing the devs to bundle an app extraction script to their roms would allow for a noob friendly and seamless transition. It would also give the devs the direct ability to choose which apps to install and where they want to install them to, much like they can do now.

Does anyone know if this can already be done by using the firstboot.sh script?

If scripts can't be run from the rom's zip file during the install, then maybe a separate menu option to generically install the closed source apps from the HTC_Official.zip on your sd card. Although this would limit the control the devs have over their roms.

In order for something like this to work, we would need to set standards that everyone could do. Similar to the way the SD card is always divided into three partitions ,first one fat32, second one ext2/3 and the third one linux-swap, always in that order. Downloading the official HTC release and saving it on a standardized location on the SD card will have to become common practice.

Please keep this thread limited to the discussion of if this idea is doable. I don't want this to turn into a "Google sux for doing this" thread.