yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[G1 Android Development] camalot:
Because they charge companies like T-Mobile to offer the phone "With Google". If Google put them on the market, then, according to google, any android device would be able to get these applications. So why would T-Mobile pay to have them included. This how Google makes money off of android, this is why they bought it in the first place. They didn't develop android for the open source community, they are a publicly traded company, all their share holders want to know is "How is this going to make use money?". But it is great that the platform is open.

But that brings up Google's "response" where they state any android device can get applications via the Android Market. How can ANY android device get these applications from the market, if only "With Google" devices ship with the market...
[G1 Android Development] jashsu:
Where did you read or hear this?
[G1 Android Development] blueheeler:
You've laid this out great for everyone. I considered myself fairly knowledgeable about these type of situations, and even I learned a bit more from your post.

Thank you.

I don't think the big uproar is over Google exercising their rights. I fully comprehend what HAS been done here. Google has every right to do this, and in fact, they have an obligation to do it (with the Terms & Conditions that we all agreed to during the bizillion times we have pressed "Agree" or "Ok" upon the initial program or phone start or when we signed an agreement with our carrier). No doubt about that.

I just think we're all shocked that Google has structured their part of this as closed. It took us by surprise, and that's where we all seem to disagree with Google. Since it makes customizing roms (or parts of our phones, ie. themes) either very difficult or impossible, it kinda bursts the bubble of Android (and in my case, the G1) being open and customizeable.

You have nailed it on the head as far as legality, and it's appreciated.

Google has missed it on, for a lack of better term, morality.

This is not that way the phone or platform has been marketed. That's the problem I have with it, right now, anyway.
[G1 Android Development] blueheeler:
Here is a fantastic evaluation of the situation from eWeek:

Google Irks Android Developers with Cyanogen Move

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/Google-Irks-Android-Developers-with-Cyanogen-Move-837741/?kc=rss
[G1 Android Development] ajchandler:
Thank you very much for clearing that up

One question I have is that I found a twitter post from "Cyanogen" which I assume is the creator of the Cyanogen Mod. The post said that the site was down due to the "Slashdot effect". My initial thoughts after reading the post were that the rumor of the C&D from Google was untrue. Or, maybe the article on Slashdot about the mythical C&D caused too much traffic to the new cyanogenmod site meaning Google did not force Cyanogen to shut the site down. Does anyone actually have the facts to be able to say for sure which is the case? Did Google force the site to close or is it log jammed due to traffic?
[G1 Android Development] ajchandler:
Twitter Post

Here is said Twitter post I was referring to in my last reply:

http://twitter.com/cyanogen/status/4377149178
[G1 Android Development] blueheeler:
Here ya go;

http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2009/09/note-on-google-apps-for-android.html

But Google did NOT "force the site to close" or anything like that. They did NOT even do a C&D on Cyanogen forcing him to stop his rom development. They DID do a C&D on him including the Google supplied apps. That's all.

EDIT: He shut down his site temporarily because he had to pull all the roms. He's currently working on a new rom that complies with Google's request. Should be released very soon. Stay tuned.
[G1 Android Development] coolbho3000:
This is a fairly one-sided (but coherent) post. The issue is not as clear cut as jashsu implies, nor does it represent the views of many in the community. blueheeler has it, in my opinion, pretty much right. Those in the community (including Android engineers themselves, as seen from tweets by Jean-Baptiste Queru and Jeff Sharkey) who oppose jashsu's views but are free of any "misconceptions" about this issue believe that Google should not have enforced its copyright in the first place.

Even though this C&D is legal, it was very surprising coming from Google. This is what the community is upset about. The thread just does not present this view (the opposing view), and that's quite a flaw for a thread supposed to clear up misconceptions.
[G1 Android Development] ajchandler:
Thanks blue heeler - so does this make it illegal to have the most recent experimental build, or should I just feel lucky that I got it flashed prior to the C&D?
[G1 Android Development] Spon4ik:
illegal? i bought this phone, with the apps on it, includes gmail, market etc.

i want to back up and restore it on the same phone it belongs to, this apps are part of a phone I paid for, its nevermind if I restore it on new OS, its my choice!
[G1 Android Development] jashsu:
I tried not to taint the first post with my own views and prejudices on the matter, merely stating facts (as opposed to opinion) whenever possible. Now, from a user and pragmatic perspective, I of course would prefer if all the Google apps were available for all users from the Market or possibly just as apks from the Google Mobile website. In reality, there many unseen issues behind software distribution for a large corporation that go all the way from regional licensing/localization to support infrastructure to carrier promotions/agreements. These things are often transparent or invisible to users (and often times even developers) and so we need to be aware that just because we want something to be does not mean it is necessarily possible for it to be.

In that way, my views are not necessarily contradictory to that of the Android hacking community. The main issue which triggered this thread in the first place is that the informed and well-reasoned responses are few and far between on xda, drowned out in the flood of ignorance. This is a sad thing.

Edit: thanks for being big enough to dissent in a civil way.
[G1 Android Development] blueheeler:
I think a thread like this has been sorely needed.

We had the weekend and a couple of dozen threads on XDA for everyone to vent. I think that was needed to.

But reality has set in and, since Google hasn't budged and is being unusually quiet about all this, it's just time to move on. It looks like the leadings modders are working on a way around the Google fiasco, and I'm encouraged about that. That's where we should focus our energy now.

There are so many misconceptions about computers, software, hardware, gadgets, phones, operating systems, phones, gaming systems, etc. I know it's our obligation to understand what we agree to when we hit those "agree" and "ok" buttons. And maybe more people would if they made them reasonable, understandable and not so full of legal terminology. Most people hit 'Ok" and start enjoying the phone. Everyone thinks they "own" the program, the OS, etc. either because they paid for it or it says "FREE" on it. They think the are free to do with it whatever they want. That is not the case. This has been a big eye-opening experience for all the folks here in these forums. It's also a big learning experience.

That's a good thing.
[G1 Android Development] blueheeler:
Keep what you have for now.

Google isn't going to confiscate your phone or anything like that.

And wait !

Cyanogen is diligently working on an update. Others are working on their's as well. They will be ready when they are ready. Just follow the instructions they post and you'll be good to go (and legal ... depending upon the rom you choose).
[G1 Android Development] shaneaus:
I believe the first post was very measured and fair.

Let's be honest! If any of us were developing an application for ourselves or our own company which relied on a great deal of hardware and software support to be in place PRIOR to that app being deployed to the end users....

AND, someone received a leaked copy and released it to thousands of users before us or our company was prepared and before we released the application...

WE WOULD BE UPSET! If this were an application that our company relied on for survival a lawsuit would follow - not, just a cease and desist.

Granted Google doesn't rely on just one app. But, the rest remains valid.

IMHO we are upset for two reasons: 1) we apparently expected Google to handle the matter in a "softer" way. Maybe, a letter saying "Don't do this" would have accomplished the same without accruing the ire of the Dev community.

2) Our own expectations due to our excitement with receiving all of these great updates/mods/custom apps/etc have made us expect TOO MUCH!

Yes, we paid for the phone which included the stock software - and, I agree I should be able to back up those apps and put them back onto the phone!

BUT, that does NOT give us the right to use an app that has not been released yet!

I support Cyanogen and this community whenever I have the finances to do so. I will continue to do so.

But, we have all gotten WAY to excited about one minor error in judgement(Cyanogen releasing the new market early) and an overeaction by Google.

Everything will calm down, get sorted out, and we will move on. I thank ALL of the Devs that have made my experience with Android so wonderful and I thank the Android Devs for their hard work, demeanor, and personal support for Cyanogen.
[G1 Android Development] Charrion:
Give credit where credit is due.

Very well put jashsu. However, I'd like to pick one nit if I may.

I think you give Cyanogen too little credit for his work. Some of the early modders did just "cook" roms adding features or theming and the like. Cyanogen has made some great additions. Although he did not come up with BFS himself, integrating it into the 1.6 code and the debugging of such integration is no mean feat.

He has also effectively helped Android with a good deal of pre-Q/A, enlisting the XDA community as beta testers for Donut. I'm sure Donut will likely end up a more polished release than Cupcake was largely thanks to Cyanogen's (and the community's) work.

Whiddling down his contribution to some "1%" of the code as you put it is quite simply unfair and untrue and certainly contributes to an air sounding like a Google apologist.
[G1 Android Development] chopsui:
Seconded. The OP perhaps reveals his own biases with that last comment. I'm not even sure what his point was.
[G1 Android Development] blueheeler:
The problem seems to be getting worse. Cyanogen posted this on Twitter a short time ago:

It appears to me that THEY (be it Google, HTC, T-Mobile, whoever) never had any intention of sticking with an open platform. As I said in the very beginning of this dispute, I was sold one phone that has morphed into a completely different phone. TOS be damned, it was marketed a whole different way. I'm not getting it, but I want my money back.
[G1 Android Development] Metal_Hurlant:
That tweet is most likely Cyanogen's attempt to avoid any further issues by allowing the exact same mechanism he's preparing for pre-installed proprietary apps to work with pre-installed proprietary drivers.

No reason for outrage there, I think.
[G1 Android Development] Charrion:
It seems there are a great many worms in that can after all.

<tinfoil hat>

One can almost wonder if Google leaked the new Market app themselves knowing someone was bound to grab it and run and thereby giving them the opportunity to open this legal pandora's box.

</tinfoil hat>
[G1 Android Development] blueheeler:
You're probably very right about Cyanogen just playing it safe. I don't blame him at all. Now that he's been served notice by Google, it seems to me that anyone else holding licenses for proprietary apps or drivers or framework or graphics or anything else could use that against him as he's already been advised that there is proprietary code he needs to be careful with.

I can still be outraged though :)

I just don't like what all this has opened up. It wasn't supposed to be this way. Dammit.
[G1 Android Development] Metal_Hurlant:
I'm a little bit excited by it actually. This creates an interesting evolutionary pressure on community android firmware.

They will either all die horribly, or some open source geniuses will create viable alternatives to the low-level HTC drivers.

Hopefully the android community has reached critical mass already to ensure that the later happens rather than the former.

If so, this will end up making Android much stronger as a viable open source platform.
[G1 Android Development] blueheeler:
I guess it depends on whether you are die-hard open source believer or not.

I have always supported open-source whenever possible, but in instances like wifi and printer drivers in Linux, up until recently, we had no choice whatsoever but to inject closed drivers into our systems. And that's what I see happening with Android right now. How long did it take to come up with open source drivers for Linux? Way too long. And now we're seeing that exact same thing here. Since I doubt anyone has been working on drivers for our phones, that leaves us in a really difficult place. By the time it takes to get all the drivers for the G1 we'll probably be on the G48. For apps, I guess that's gonna be a bit easier ... or we could just use mobile website versions until something becomes available. But drivers, we won't even have a functional phone without them.

For reasons just like that, I cannot be 100% open source.
[G1 Android Development] crpercodani:
Someone said the G1 wasn't marketed like this, I agree. They had us under the impression we would have a open source OS, and no mention of any apps not being such. They are going the apple route with all this, but the difference with apple is you know what your getting. Who the hell knows what your getting with a "Google phone" anymore, I have already switched my sim into another smartphone while I have a debate with myself wether or not I want to continue using anything they are a part of.

I hate trickery, deceit, lying, double talk, and anything resembling any of that. It is a part of how I live my life and the type of person I am, once you have done any of those things you lose all respect and trust. I don't see any real way of gaining it back other then apologizing and keeping to it from then on, I wish more of the community felt this way and wasn't so quick to find reasons to go along with Google's wishes & commands, so quick to please the giant and let them have control over what we can do to our phones, or to there so-called open source OS.

I am interested to see what some of you do and where things go from here.
[G1 Android Development] ccriffman:
Well spoken explanation, and much needed- chris
[G1 Android Development] Charrion:
It seems people wanted to believe it was all over when Cyanogen announced he would be able to re-package his rom minus the proprietary apps. All was forgiven with Google and we could go back to status quo.

Now we are starting to see the true implications of this situation and I don't think we've seen more than the tip of the iceberg.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, the big problems will be with drivers. You can bet that none of the hardware OEMs will make their drivers open source, it opens them up to someone reverse engineering the hardware itself and making something cheaper and/or better. That's why linux still has closed drivers for much of the hardware out their or we have to rely on windows wrappers for things like wifi drivers. With Android we don't even have the workaround of windows driver wrappers and unless the OEMs decide to make distributable versions of their hardware drivers, custom roms are dead in the water.

There may be hope yet for working custom roms, but don't ever assume Android is truly open and every single hardware OEM, carrier, and Google can pull the plug on your custom rom.
[G1 Android Development] jashsu:
Depends on what you mean when you say "Android". If you meant the software compiled from the code on the Android Open Source Project (source.android.com) then yes it is truly open. If by "Android" you mean the sum of the software preinstalled on a retail Android device, then no it is not all open. That is one of the central precepts of the Android Open Source Project-- it is specifically licensed to allow manufacturers and carriers to add on closed source code (open source licenses can promote AND stifle innovation).

http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/android_faq.html

Edit: by the way, just to be clear, the above quote means modifications to the actual operating system (the stuff built from the AOSP), not just including closed source apps (which are distinctly separate from the os).
[G1 Android Development] deafptl4ever:
Cyanogen Only

You only used Cyanogens name in this article and nothing about all the other rom makers. Almost all the other rom makers depend on wholly or partly Cyanogens rom, so they should be singled out too. I dont see why only Cyanogen is being singled out. Why hasnt anyone gone after the rest. Everyone knows why, because he was the only threat to them, period. They took him seriously and none of the other rom makers.
[G1 Android Development] jashsu:
The article specifically names Cyanogen only for the reason he's the one all the talk is surrounding, but it applies for all the other "ROM cookers" as well. As for why Google specifically targeted Cyanogen, I can only guess that it was due to the prerelease leak of the new Android Market. You'd have to ask Google's legal department for a concise answer.
[G1 Android Development] jashsu:
The funny thing about the Android "modding" community (esp among the end users) is its almost absurd fanboy loyalties to the "hacker hero" of the day.

And the ironic thing is in the future after Cyanogen stops working on "ROM cooking", these end users will still be using Google's proprietary apps, despite their current vitriolic rants to the contrary.
[G1 Android Development] blueheeler:
Not me :)

At least not the one's I don't absolutely have to.

Search: Bing

Email: K9 for my non-Google/Gmail pop3 email accts, trying to settle on Exchange software since I just set that up on Friday

Youtube: Never been a fan, so that isn't an issue.

Picasa: Why? I have my own website where I can post photo galleries

Google Apps: Why? I paid for Documents 2 Go

Calendar: just need to get all the data transfered over to Exchange

If I run across anything else, hopefully I will find a non-Google solution for that too.

An no, I don't think Google is totally to blame for all this. They aren't. They just started the ball rolling. I accept responsibility as well. I agreed to the TOS and I bought the phone without doing more checking. I am not a fan of MS either, but for the most part, they have a least kept their distance from modded roms, that's why I choose Bing & Exchange. If I could find an app for Android that worked with 1&1 Mail Xchange, I wouldn't even use Exchange.

But I see what you're saying.

And agreed.
[G1 Android Development] Zoide_:
Why don't we focus on making an easy-to-use kitchen so that relatively patient people can make their own ROMs?

That way we can focus on improving the software instead of going crazy over whether the license from company XYZ for file ABC allows copying a file to cache, etc?

Or is there already a thread for this? I'm thinking of creating one but I wouldn't be sure where to do so. I have a Sapphire but it's clear that most people still go to the Dream section...
[G1 Android Development] Loccy:
I don't mean to dig you out specifically, but it really bugs me when people throw around the word "illegal" when the issue at hand has nothing to do with law. What this is, is a breach of a software licence, I.e. a breach of contract. As in many jurisdictions you have a legal right to back up software you have purchased, this contract would not be legally enforceable and itself might be "illegal" in many jurisdictions. This is, I suspect, why Cyan initially stated that pulling the affected apks from an existing build would be equally as "illegal" as his original rom, but then later went down precisely this path.
[G1 Android Development] Apollo-2:
Let's review

@crpercodani and @blueheeler, why so butthurt? Draw, write, paint, sculpt, or otherwise flesh out an amazing idea that will make you money. Then instead, we'll take your work for granted and give it away for free. Sound reasonable?

Also, here's the big picture to really sum things up: without closed source software and limits on how it can be distributed, any software can be used on any device. Service providers would then have no incentive to draw customers with nifty exclusive features. Doing something better than the competition drives innovation, it also helps to be able to pay for that innovation.
[G1 Android Development] highlandsun:
I hate to break it to you, but writing amazing code and giving it away for free is exactly how I make my living. I'm the Chief Architect of the OpenLDAP Project, and for the past 5+ years we've been the fastest, most efficient, most reliable, most scalable directory software in the world. This code has been available for free since 1998 and yet working on it has been earning me a comfortable living for the past decade.

Closed source software does not lead to innovation, it's the exact opposite - it leads to stagnation.

The best incentive to get people to want to pay for your offerings is to simply make the best product possible. Smart people will realize that they need to support you to enable you to continue solving their problems. Service providers as a rule tend to be bad at this, which is why they need stupid things like 2-year contracts to keep you as a customer - because on a purely objective feature/offering level, they have *nothing* that's really any good. You talk about competition but there really isn't any in the US market - all of the carriers are charging prices far out of line with the value of the services they're offering. What competition is there? If you want better service and better customer support, who can you get it from? They're all equally bad.
[G1 Android Development] blueheeler:
Apollo, you know that doesn't apply here. We're stealing nothing. If we were using stock roms, we would be using the same Google programs, the same drivers from HTC and Qualcomm, blah blah blah. I don't believe in stealing software. I don't believe in stealing anything. But I do believe we have the right to use our phones the way they were intended AND modified if we so choose. This is OUR phone, using a custom rom that --won't work on phones that don't already come loaded with the apps/drivers that are in question--. They've already been preloaded on our phones from the very beginning.

There's being reasonable and there's being unreasonable. If we were over in one of the WinMo forums discussing how to get Cyanogen's mods to work on our phone, it would be totally unreasonable. But you know damn good and well that, what we're doing here and what we're asking & expecting is a totally reasonable use of the apps & drivers.

I think a lot of people are missing the point ... We're not asking to do anything "illegal". What we're asking and hoping for is a change in licensing (or whatever it takes) to allow us to conform.
[G1 Android Development] Spon4ik:
I just thought, if CyanoGen, in the new, no Google Android version will include alternative App Store, Google will lose 30000, and I think even more in the future, customers who could purchase the application through the Google Market (and with each Google gets the sale dividends) will be buying them with alternative App Store. Google will remain with nothing.

Google has a monopoly over their Goole Market closed source, without any profit from it.

And I think that many developers will sell their applications, not only through Google, but also through the alternative shops.

It will be real competition, which will only lead to improvement not only programs but also to improve the stores themselves and their services.

consumers will benefit from this.