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Android Devices Are Hives of License Violations

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the license-to-license dept.

inkscapee writes "Android developers are paying little attention to Free/Open Source software licenses and have a 71% violation rate. Come on folks, FOSS licenses are easy to comply with, certainly easier than proprietary software licenses, and less punitive. But it seems even the tiny hoops that FOSS requires are too much for devs eager to cash in."

17 of 299 comments (clear)

  1. What the hell? by Stratoukos · · Score: 5, Informative

    The article doesn't mention Android separately. It has one set of numbers for both Android and iOS. Exact quote:

    A new study from open source services vendor OpenLogic reports that 71 percent of Apple iOS and Google Android apps are not in compliance. OpenLogic scanned 635 apps, including both free and paid on the Apple App store and Google Android Marketplace. Of those 635 scanned apps, 52 apps include Apache licensed code while 16 included GPL/LGPL licensed code.

    Who the hell wrote that summary?

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    1. Re:What the hell? by jdgeorge · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Furthermore, the 71% figure has no apparent relationship with the other numbers mentioned in the article.

      The article is nearly as brain-dead as the summary.

    2. Re:What the hell? by Facegarden · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You have a negative one score, but there is nothing wrong with what you said. This summary is complete crap. Slashdot chose to publish it. So Slashdot is publishing crap. This happens often. It is then not unreasonable to say the site has stagnated. I sure am sick of all this bottom of the barrel content myself.

      The submitted did not read the article, or was an idiot. The approver(s?) did not read the article or are idiots. Everyone involved in posts like this are doing a bad job or are an idiot. Why does slashdot keep doing this? I see extremely poorly written content all the time here. Its just dumb.

      *ALSO*, most blogs nowadays read their own comments and post updates like "many people in the comments have pointed out...". I don't think I have ever seen this happen on Slashdot, or if I have, it does not happen often enough. You'll see times where 80% of the comments are rightfully pointing out that the story is BS, but it still does not get updated. Posting bad content and then not fixing it when it is clearly shown to be BS just shows that the people running the site do not care about the quality of the content, or at the least are very bad at showing it. You just see false stories hang out on the front page all day long. Its ridiculous.

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    3. Re:What the hell? by dgatwood · · Score: 4, Interesting

      And one set for GPL and Apache, too. That's pretty night and day as far as the requirements go, and it's not clear if all of those are really even violations.

      I mean, GPL code, sure. That's pretty much toxic to closed source development. But Apache? How do you even violate the Apache license when you're distributing only object code?

      Apache defines a derivative work very narrowly, such that (by my reading anyway) library code under an Apache license used as a small part of a larger work isn't one. Therefore, one could potentially argue that it doesn't even require attribution or a copy of the license....

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    4. Re:What the hell? by MozeeToby · · Score: 5, Informative

      Of the 635 apps that they looked at, they confidently identified 68 as having Apache or GPL'd code. Of the 68 apps with open source code 71%, or 48 in absolute terms, were in violation. I admit that it would have been clearer and more interesting to say that 7.6% of the apps they looked at were in violation. If they had a truly random sampling and that number held out, you'd be looking at more than 20,000 apps that are violating the Apache and GPL licenses.

  2. What about iOS? by rafial · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wait a minute here, the linked article says "A new study from open source services vendor OpenLogic reports that 71 percent of Apple iOS and Google Android apps are not in compliance." Yet the headline for this story mentions only Android. I understand it's become fashionable to bash Android lately, but this seems a bit egregious. The problem appears to be endemic across all mobile devices.

  3. 71 percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    How does 52 apps out of 635 add up to 71%??

    1. Re:71 percent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Easy. 5+2 = 7, and you carry the one.

  4. Re:Do no evil (directly) by teh31337one · · Score: 4, Informative

    You flag the app, and Google will remove the apps from the android market. Why are Google to blame here? iOS has violations too. http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/iPhone/The+Blocks+Cometh/news.asp?c=26696

  5. "FOSS licenses are easy to comply with, certainly" by BagOBones · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Actually I find the Copy left licences have far more demands than any commercial licence. You can spend huge amounts of time figuring out if you can link or not link, how you must publish the code and how you can distribute the application.

    With commercial software you are often presented with a library or set of tools you can or can't bundle with your product, past that there is no code to deal with most of the time..

    --
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  6. Re:"FOSS licenses are easy to comply with, certain by Teckla · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Actually I find the Copy left licences have far more demands than any commercial licence. You can spend huge amounts of time figuring out if you can link or not link, how you must publish the code and how you can distribute the application.

    As a commercial software developer myself, I'm glad at least one other person on Slashdot understands this!

    For some of us, copyleft code is, by far, the most expensive code there is. In fact, it's pretty much poison.

  7. Re:Do no evil (directly) by macs4all · · Score: 4

    You flag the app, and Google will remove the apps from the android market. Why are Google to blame here? iOS has violations too. http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/iPhone/The+Blocks+Cometh/news.asp?c=26696

    Ok, that's one iOS example down, 177,499 to go to equal Android ( at 71% of the 250,000 current iPhone apps).

    I retract my previous post. I didn't RTFA, and didn't realize the Summary was misleading.

    Sorry, Androids, I apologize. I guess we're ALL in the license-violation-boat together...

  8. 27% for Android - 32% for iPhone by Infonaut · · Score: 5, Informative

    From the press release for the study:

    OpenLogic found that among the applications that use the Apache or GPL/LGPL licenses, the compliance rate was only 29%. Android compliance was 27% and iPhone/iOS compliance was 32%. Overall compliance of Android applications using the GPL/LGPL was 0%.

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  9. Re:"FOSS licenses are easy to comply with, certain by The_Wilschon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, that was the original intent. RMS envisioned a world in which all software was Free (Libre), and then he thought about how this could be brought about. What he came up with was two-pronged. 1) copyleft 2) write lots of really excellent software, so excellent that people will want to use it even though they know they will get sucked into the copyleft. It appears to be working.

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  10. Re:"FOSS licenses are easy to comply with, certain by H0p313ss · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Actually I find the Copy left licences have far more demands than any commercial licence. You can spend huge amounts of time figuring out if you can link or not link, how you must publish the code and how you can distribute the application.

    As a commercial software developer myself, I'm glad at least one other person on Slashdot understands this!

    For some of us, copyleft code is, by far, the most expensive code there is. In fact, it's pretty much poison.

    Which was the intent, free to extend, not so free to commercialize. TANSTAAFL

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  11. Re:"FOSS licenses are easy to comply with, certain by xaxa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    copy-left is a fucking pain in the ass unless you are also copy-left

    That's pretty much the point.

  12. Big claims, no proof == slashvertisement by tomhudson · · Score: 4, Informative
    1. While they claim that 71% of almost 700 apps they scanned were in violation, they didn't list a single example.

    2. They offer to sell developers scanning software so devs can make sure their apps are in compliance.

    3. PROFIT!?!

    Color me skeptical.