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Google Serves a Cease-and-Desist On Android Modder
Several readers sent in word that Google has served a Cease and Desist order to Cyanogen, one of the most prolific Android modders: his CyanogenMod is enjoyed by 30,000 users. The move is puzzling. Gizmodo wonders what Google's game is, and Lauren Weinstein calls the move "not of the high 'Googley' caliber" that one would expect of the company.
Google Maps, Google Talk and Gmail and so on require a license to distribute them. Cyanogen doesn't have one. Google C&D's because of that. Case closed.
Google a giant company, not your BFF.
Film at 11.
Android itself is, but of course some software written for it can be closed or even, hold your breath, commercial.
Google Maps, Google Talk and Gmail apps are closed software.
And before someone jumps on the "but I want the whole thing to be open!!", its more open when developers have choices.
Did you read the article? It clearly says that its todo with shipping google's closed apps like gmail/gmaps/etc. The OS is free but much of the software is not. Personally it seams pretty dumb to stop people handing out your free apps, but it is definitely within their rights.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Leaving this issue aside, it does seem that Android is not the open savior that every thought it might be. Given that for a cell phone to work it must have towers, and that the towers are controlled by private enterprise in search of profit, and that large firms tend to sue each other as part of the competitive process, any completely open phone is unlikely to thrive in the marketplace. If google were no a commodity vendor, then I would say that an open phone might work. But given they want tens of millions of customers, there is going to be a compromise of open software and control.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Stop distributing those apps in the ROM!
Add an app to retrieve them from the original (backup) version of the phone.
SafeTex: Copying copyrighted textures from original Quake to custom commercial levels without incident. IE Don't distribute what's already there.
IMarv
Trusting software vendors is no smarter than trus
"not of the high Googley' caliber"
Does anyone really believe that Google is the "do no evil" company that it used to be, pre-IPO? It has become just as suspect as any big company. The bigger problem is that people don't even see Google for what it is. It is like MS all over again.
OK. Just my $.02 worth, I guess
Did your history book also mention that?
So, since ALL systems of humanity eventually fail, wouldnt it be more important to look at the quality of life that exists under these systems for the brief periods that they exist?
Google is sending a C&D because someone is distributing closed-source Google apps (like GMail, Google Maps, etc...) without a license.
This is why I want a phone that runs only Free Software in the base install. If I know that the base functionality is open and free, that means I can take that base set of software and modify it and distribute it to other people without worry of getting a C&D letter like this one.
Free Software licenses are a great way to CYA. Sure, they do a number of other things for you as well, and they aren't always the best at dealing with software patents, but they CYA a lot more than most proprietary licenses I've seen.
coding is life
Cyanogen has been modding for awhile without any trouble from Google. Recently he released a rom that was basically android 1.6 in full, including the new improved version of android market, way before the rest of android users will get it. I think thats what Google is mostly bent out of shape about, hopefully they can reach some sort of peaceful agreement that allows cyanogen to keep modding. His roms are great and make the g1 a powerful device.
Wrong end. When you're talking about something that needs to use a network to be useful, you've got to start at the network. The device is the LEAST important part. As long as the phone company gets to say what does or does not run on their network the devices will do what they need to meet those requirements.
It's kind of funny actually - Apple releases a closed phone but doesn't sick the lawyers on any of the hackers. Google releases an "open" phone but does sick the lawyers on the hackers.
Bottom line most developers are going to care less about why google is sending lawyers after their community than the fact that they may have to deal with that crap if they develop for Android. Since there are groups producing similar mods to Windows Mobile firmwre, this Cease and Desist has the potential to make the open source mod community around android less vibrant than the community around the Microsoft's closed source OS. Which is a real shame.
If Google doesn't do some rapid damage control they're liable to find their development community moving over to other Open Source phone OSes that don't send lawyers after their development community.
Seems to me that the most reasonable compromise, for all involved, is for Google to allow redistribution without modification of their closed source software. Yes, Google has the legal right to make cyanogen stop distributing, but how does that benefit Google? Lots of 'proprietary' software are distributed as .zip or .exe files which the license allows you to make verbatim copies of. This is slightly different, because the software is incorporated as part of a ROM image, but as long as the software inside the ROM image isn't modified, Google should just let him distribute. He's not hurting them in any real way.
Umm, Linux is the same way, developers have the freedom to write a closed source app for it. Which is good. Otherwise I wouldn't have matlab on linux. Which is an industry standard for many engineering applications. So this is really not too news worthy, Google has closed source apps and open source apps. Just because a company has some OSS apps, doesn't mean they can't defend the rest of their apps.
It is illegal to distribute closed source apps without the license. It doesn't matter if you think what you are doing is not for profit or doing any 'harm'. Google is even required by law to enforce its copyright. The answer is not to complain about google doing evil or about how it is 'harmless' to use this software illegally but to make free software clones of the apps and avoid the legal non-sense altogether. And in most cases, you don't even need to make them... they are already done.
This is something that must be understood. Some "alternative" GNU/Linux distros out there love to include things like Skype and flash without any license. It is illegal doing so, and the reason most of the major distros don't do it. (Some of them don't do it because they don't like proprietary software, but most of them really do it just to avoid the copyright infrigement).
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
From TMONews:
"20:03] google just cease and desisted me
[20:15] cyanogenmod is probably going to be dead
[20:16] i'm opening a dialogue with them
[20:20] no they are talking specifically about the closed-source google apps
[20:20] and how i am not licensed to distribute them
[20:20] my argument is that i only develop for google-experience devices which are already licensed for these apps
[20:20] so we'll see what they say
[20:20] maybe we can work something out
[20:24] maps, market, talk, gmail, youtube"20:03] google just cease and desisted me
[20:15] cyanogenmod is probably going to be dead
[20:16] i'm opening a dialogue with them
[20:20] no they are talking specifically about the closed-source google apps
[20:20] and how i am not licensed to distribute them
[20:20] my argument is that i only develop for google-experience devices which are already licensed for these apps
[20:20] so we'll see what they say
[20:20] maybe we can work something out
[20:24] maps, market, talk, gmail, youtube"
Probably he will have to drop those apps. This will make loading Cyanogen a little more difficult. Next, will Google prevent him from using those apps to test his distro, or will they make it impossible to run them under his ROMs?
Somehow, this is beginning to look like the end of Google the Nice. The beginning of the open Google the Evil.
Kinda sad, but now that Android is important, the game changes.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
You mean like China?
Google, please hire Cyanogen. He is clever!
RFC1925
This isn't any different from the Second Life client where third party packagers have to leave out certain closed-source components that Linden Lab uses. When you use them, you take the SL client downloaded from Linden Lab, and add the updated open source components. Most open source clients include an installer now that copies the closed source components from your original SL directory into the new application.
At least on the Rogers Dream (Canadian version of the G1) Cyanogen and similar are the ONLY way to run the phone well..
With the stock firmware timestamps are broken (as in text messages showing up in the wrong time zone, making the sorting of a conversation all wrong) and Performance is miserable.
By contrast Cyanogenmod more than solves these problems, transforming it from a badly flawed phone that makes Android look really BAD, to an excellent that makes android look great.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that, given what a poor job rogers has done resolving serious bugs like the timestamp one, I would never buy another android phone from Rogers, if I were going to be stuck using the stock firmware. However, as long as the modder community remains in play, I am a happy user who would be happy to buy a new device that came out.
I guess my point is, if google starts to shutdown the modders, they really are actually pushing customers (well, at least one) away.
What's even more funny is that Microsoft, a company hardly synonymous with openness, has long tolerated ROM modders doing the exact same thing on Windows Mobile. Heck, it's far more extreme, as ROM modders on Windows Mobile have been building ROMs off of unreleased versions of WinMo 6.5.1 and including things like Microsoft Office for WinMo in its entirety, and Microsoft hasn't complained.
Meanwhile, the self-annointed Do-No-Evil Google with its open Android system is releasing the lawyers.
When both Apple and Microsoft are more open than you are, even only about a certain aspect of your product, that's not a good sign. It's sad, but Windows Mobile is really the most open mainstream mobile OS out there these days.
His latest ROM has the new market app which isn't only closed-source, but it's unreleased closed source. Google doesn't want their stuff going into the wild until they say so.