[G1 General] jubeh:
People need to get off of their "Open Source" high horse if they don't understand the law.

AOSP is open source (at least most of it, there are still several necessary blobs), and the code there is freely available to anybody. However, the work produced from AOSP is anything but free.

Most of AOSP is released under a very permissive Apache 2.0 license. Under this license, any modification to the code is the property of the programmer to release as they wish. Had I wanted it that way, I could have released my whole build under a very mean license that would relentlessly pursue anybody who dared post even a single part of my release anywhere else. If one of those md5s matches, there'd be problem.

Also, the license allows me to release the rom without having to release the source (like the GPL does), so basically, Android is free and open source, but only referring to the code you download from AOSP, not any half-assed code that any random joe puts up online. So, from that standpoint, NO, ANDROID IS NOT OPEN SOURCE AND EVERYBODY'S PROPERTY.

Also, how can somebody let the "Open Source" and "people's property" and "law" words out of their mouths when they take no heed to the shameless stealing of google's, htc's, and qualcomm's (plus others') IP that's being pushed ON EVERY SINGLE ROM, WINMO, ANDROID, OR ANYTHING ELSE ON THIS WHOLE FORUM!!!!.

I dare anybody to show me their license to re-distribute all code from all involved companies.

Guess what an android build with nothing but free parts would look like?

Remember those broken SDK builds where nothing worked, there was no radio, no gapps, no audio?

That's the current state of "open source"...

It has nothing to do with the state of the legality of distributions. In fact, the whole thing is ridiculous, for example, where a certain mod who I won't name went on a holy quest against QuickOffice calling it "warez" but shamelessly ignored that pretty much everything else on the Dream forum, hell, on the whole site, is nothing but a big stinking pile of warez. I still wonder what that one was about...

Here's the real problem with XDA; all those people thinking "Oh devs are some sort of god, they make the best things, we're not worthy, I'm dumb and I can't contribute, so I'll just send some money".

Guess what? Now you're really being stupid. Any dumb chap can put the effort, with enough dedication, to make their own personal builds. Most of us doing this are geeks, a lot of us are a-holes, and I could assure you that the vast majority of us could give two f**cks if that thing you flashed is boot-looping even though it worked for us. As far as we're concerned, you screwed up and should have read better.

We weren't born tied to a computer. We had to work for what we know, and if you people want to be a retard and give money for something easy, then that's up to you, but you all really have to stop that dumb attitude that "devs" are somehow better than you. Only difference is that this is where we decided to put our interest at.

Now, this brings me back to topic. So, what if some guy took my build. I could have done something about it. I certainly did have the legal ease to do so. Turns out, I don't give a rat's ass one way or the other. You people are paying too much attention to trivialities. You're trying to put this on some sort of clash of the giants where guys are either good guys or bad guys. You're judging a "dev"'s personal qualities based on the quality of their work. If they pull up an underhanded, kangilistic build, then you judge them.

I can assure you that the makers of the most "stable", most "fastest", most popular build out there are as much douchebags as you, me, or anybody else is.