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Author Topic: Android's new SDK terms are incompatible with FOSS.  (Read 7415 times)
Neon_Knight
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« on: January 04, 2013, 10:14:39 AM »

Quote
"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."

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Peter Silie
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« Reply #1 on: January 04, 2013, 12:41:15 PM »

Dont worry:
http://www.ubuntu.com/devices/phone

Soon my Android time will be over Wink
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pelya
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« Reply #2 on: January 04, 2013, 02:45:49 PM »

As I understand, this license applies only to the binary SDK release downloaded from developer.android.com. You can compile your own version of SDK, using Android sources, and release it with any license you want (Apache license allows that).
Seems like they've made it that way to have some legal or moral argument against things like Aliyun, which was an Android with app store containing pirated apps - Google had no jurisdiction inside China to sue that thing (and a history of conflict with Chinese government, so they'll lose any legal suit there), so they've used oppressive move against Asus instead. Amazon also has Android fork, and their developer site just redirects you to developer.android.com to download SDK, but I'm not seeing Google suing them for violating their new SDK license.
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andrewj
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« Reply #3 on: January 05, 2013, 05:00:58 AM »

My summary of slashdot comments:
  • only the SDK is affected by this, Android (the OS) is still open source
  • the SDK was not open source and always had those "cannot copy" etc terms
  • the terms of the SDK just became a bit more restrictive than before
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Peter Silie
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« Reply #4 on: January 08, 2013, 10:48:15 AM »

And - ofc - there is Replicant:
http://replicant.us/2013/01/replicant-4-0-sdk-release/
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