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CopperheadOS Fights Unlicensed Installations On Nexus Phones (xda-developers.com)
An anonymous reader writes:
Earlier this week security-hardened Android build CopperheadOS temporarily blocked Nexus updates on its servers after finding out that other companies have been flashing the ROM onto Nexus phones and selling them commercially in violation of the CopperheadOS licensing terms. The incident highlights an inherent problem in getting open source to be used by the masses: the difficulty of organizations being able to build and monetize a successful, long-term open source business model...
"We've enabled over-the-air updates again," CopperheadOS tweeted Saturday, "to avoid impacting our remaining customers on Nexus devices and other legitimate users. However, downloads on the site will no longer be available and we'll be making changes to the update client for Nexus devices."
In an earlier series of tweets, they explained it's an ongoing issue. "It's not okay to disrespect our non-commercial licensing terms for those official builds by flashing and selling it on hundreds of phones... This is why we've been unable to sell access to Pixel images. There are people that are going to buy those and flash + sell devices in direct competition with us in violation of the licensing terms. Needing to deal with so many people acting in bad faith makes this difficult.
"It's not permitted for our official Nexus builds and yet that's what's happening. We do all of the development, testing, release engineering and we provide the infrastructure, and then competitors sell far more devices than us in violation of our licensing terms. Ridiculous."
"We've enabled over-the-air updates again," CopperheadOS tweeted Saturday, "to avoid impacting our remaining customers on Nexus devices and other legitimate users. However, downloads on the site will no longer be available and we'll be making changes to the update client for Nexus devices."
In an earlier series of tweets, they explained it's an ongoing issue. "It's not okay to disrespect our non-commercial licensing terms for those official builds by flashing and selling it on hundreds of phones... This is why we've been unable to sell access to Pixel images. There are people that are going to buy those and flash + sell devices in direct competition with us in violation of the licensing terms. Needing to deal with so many people acting in bad faith makes this difficult.
"It's not permitted for our official Nexus builds and yet that's what's happening. We do all of the development, testing, release engineering and we provide the infrastructure, and then competitors sell far more devices than us in violation of our licensing terms. Ridiculous."
If you look at their github account they've dropped their license into clones of Google's Android repositories. Even if you're adding commits you don't get to re-license the code.
This is FUD. If CopperheadOS prohibits selling it commercially, then they are not using an open-source license. By definition, open-source licenses cannot prevent others from selling the software commercially or otherwise prohibit redistribution or discriminate against fields of endeavor (including business use).
And, indeed, most sources (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...) call the Copperhead license "source available" rather than "open source" because of these non-open-source restrictions.
See https://opensource.org/osd
1. Free Redistribution
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.
2. 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
And flashing it onto a ROM would constitute a derived work covered under section 3 of the OSD.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
CopperheadOS use the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license as their compilation copyright. This is not an Open Source license, thus CopperheadOS is not Open Source.
Bruce Perens.