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The Android SDK Is No Longer Free Software

Posted by Soulskill on from the fighting-fragmentation-at-all-costs dept.

New submitter tian2992 writes "The new terms for the Android SDK now include phrases such as 'you may not: (a) copy (except for backup purposes), modify, adapt, redistribute, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, or create derivative works of the SDK or any part of the SDK' among other non-Free-software-friendly terms, as noted by FSF Europe's Torsten Grote. Replicant, a free fork of Android, announced the release of Replicant SDK 4.0 based on the latest sources of the Android SDK without the new terms."

5 of 535 comments (clear)

  1. But Android is open by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Right?

    1. Re:But Android is open by Flipao · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, this was quite a lottle bit evil. As were all the various anticompetitive practices they've been into recently. Many of those have even been directly trying to bring down open source competition, like deliberately polluting OpenStreetMap's data.

      They're just so evil, I mean can you imagine how much better things would be if that stupid Android hadn't showed up?, we'd all be using phones made by Apple or running Windows, now those are companies you want to support, who on earth would want an Open Source OS to be relevant in a consumer market for once, that's preposterous.

      And the OpenStreetMap data, it's so clear that this goes to the highest levels of the company.... oh wait.

      http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/17/2714044/google-contractors-sacked-vandalism-openstreetmap

      Sometimes it pays off to have some fucking perspective, here's an obnoxious smiley face right back atcha *:)*

  2. Ubuntu Mobile ... by Pieroxy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    All of a sudden a new market opens for Ubuntu Mobile ;-)

    Seriously, does that impact anyone? The thing is available for free anyway...

    --
    Write boring code, not shiny code!
    1. Re:Ubuntu Mobile ... by iakoad · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It impacts people who care about principle the software they use is based upon.
      It also might influence (in part because of the above) future developments in Andriod. Of course, I doubt it will make a large enough difference to matter to most people.

  3. Re:Does this surprise anyone? by whisper_jeff · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ok, I'm not entirely the biggest Google fan but:

    Google has long been willing to compromise on their "do no evil" mantra...

    Evil?? Are you claiming this change to their terms of use is evil??

    Wow. That word has literally lost all meaning, hasn't it...