Comments on: Open Android Alliance Aims To Resurrect Modding

By: twrock

twrock — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 12:47:32 +0000

@Rick
Yes the device drivers are a troublesome complication. But if I’m not mistaken, unlike an app, a device driver’s purpose is only to make the hardware work with the OS. The driver only benefits you if you already have the actual device. Seems then that there is no potential harm to the hardware manufacturers to have those drivers redistributed, and thus no motivation to do anything about it if it is happening.

I guess one precedent I see is that there are sites on the web dedicated to supplying you with missing device drivers for some piece of hardware you picked up along the way but no longer have the driver disk for. I don’t think anyone gets any C&D for such “distribution of proprietary code” because there is no “value” in the driver unless you have the device.

Maybe I’m missing something, but I hope not. Of course it would be ideal to get the hardware people to release open drivers or to have their consent to distribute them (not much chance of that; they have no motivation to take the risk of saying “sure”; easier to just ignore it) or else write new drivers and release them as OSS (lots of work).

By: will

will — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:34:46 +0000

I have to agree with brian, the cyanogen rom is noticeably superior to the stock

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:02:23 +0000

For those commenters discounting the work of Cyanogen: Boy you either don’t use it, or are not savvy enough to appreciate. My stock G1 was a piece of crap. Force closing so many times a day. After I put Cyanogen’s ROM, boy it was a pleasure to use. The performance improved almost 100%.
Also from what I read it wasn’t due to OHA, but Google acted on its own to threaten the Cyanogen. Heck even Microsoft has not done this to modders. I suspect more than anything else, Google is getting jealous and embarrassed than it can’t produce a quality software like these modders. Google: apologize to Steve Kondik and don’t be evil…

By: Rick

Rick — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:30:09 +0000

It seems this saga is not over yet. From Cyanogen’s Twitter feed today “This is about proprietary device drivers and not Google at this point. These drivers are not redistributable.”

So it seems its gonna be impossible to legally mod Android for a while. I always doubted Android’s openness. This is just a confirmation.

By: Rick

Rick — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:01:40 +0000

I think the single most important thing for Open Android is to come out with a nicely designed Android Market App. Google cleverly closed sourced the Market App. There are many countries which can’t access Merket App on their Android phone even for free Apps. Once there is an alternative market, the floodgates will open for Open Android and Google will loose its leverage.

By: Topher

Topher — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:17:55 +0000

Let’s offer solutions people. For instance:

*I want to mod android but I cannot redistribute Google apps.
*Your phone is a “Google experience” phone.
*Google needs to offer these apps as paid apps that show up as “already purchased” since you DID already pay for them with the cost of the phone.
*If you do not have a Google phone, you can still pay (a reasonable fee) to download their apps or, once the OAA releases a stable package, you can opt to use theirs for free.
*The only hitch I can forsee is the device driver issue. If they are indeed proprietary to Google, maybe…just maybe they can make them redistributable as they are necessary for custom ROMs. This is beneficial to Google in that they can openly piggyback the work of modders into their official releases rather than drive the whole dev community underground.

Problem fixed…everyone is happy. Modders mod, Google makes money, and the end user has a choice.

Just my .02

By: Suri

Suri — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:08:43 +0000

While reading about this issue at another website, someone raised an interesting hypothesis. What if Google wanted to create a storm over it, just to mobilize Open Source community to start getting more active for Open Android ? Google can’t do it openly due to OHA obligations. I doubt this theory though, as it may backfire and do more harm to Google’s other products, including Chrome OS plans. But this incidence has definitely created a black spot for Google which will hard, if not impossible, to wash off.

By: BJ

BJ — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:33:04 +0000

Someone above gave an analogy that Cyanogen ROM is like re-modeling a house whereas Google is the architect. I disagree. Its more challenging to re-model a badly designed house to make it more functional and beautiful. Its far easier to start from scratch than to fix a mess.

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:23:29 +0000

@doom
I didn’t intend to question your tech savvy or for that matter anyone else’s. Agreed I was blunt in my response. But can you still honestly say that after using Cyanogen’s ROM, you see his effort as just some minor polishing of Android, or some major coding effort. If you still hold to your views, then yes sorry I’ll view you as a Google apologist.
Its easy to discount one person or small company’s efforts compared to big corp. But just look at at Linux, Facebook, Tesla, I can keep giving examples…, and you’ll see what these small teams can achieve. Google made a big mistake with this move, and once they loose Tech community love, they can keep all their precious apps and nobody will give a hoot about it.

By: will

will — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 08:17:18 +0000

What i don’t understand, and maybe i’m being stupid, is that google positively encourage users to download their sync/mail for other smartphone platforms because what google needs to generate revenue are users, so why are they being so precious about android?

if someone can explain this to me i’ll be mucho appreciato

By: Alvin

Alvin — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 06:24:24 +0000

I agree with Rob. Google has the right to allow/disallow 3rd party to distribute their products. I mean, there are lots of other closed source android apps in the market that can’t be freely distributed. But just because it is Google people scream that they are being a jerk, etc. Why do they have to be treated differently from other android developers? After all, they have open sourced the Android OS and make it freely available.

I really respect Cyanogen on how he views the matters. Kudos to him. He has a workaround already which allows the Google apps to be transferred from original rom to his rom. So, CyanogenMod will still continue on.

By: doom

doom — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 02:11:40 +0000

*have

By: doom

doom — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 02:11:07 +0000

@Jason

You are ridiculous for even having to ask if I, or anyone on here for that matter, has used a Cyanogen ROM. Obviously it’s not just you that is so technically savvy that you use a customized ROM in your G1 device.

You should apologize just for being naive.

By: twrock

twrock — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:46:49 +0000

Obviously Cyanogen (and other ROM modders like him) is brilliant, does great work, and adds huge value to Android devices. Nothing said by me is intended to denigrate that in the lest. But….

People need to remember that he is starting with a “finished” product. He isn’t creating a new Android OS; he’s modifying the existing one. It really is ignorant of people to imply that Cyanogen is making a better OS than anything the OHA/Google could come up with. He’s starting with the existing product, the result of someone else’s efforts. If there wasn’t something there for him to mod, you wouldn’t be getting this great, “new” ROM. Notice the the name is Cyanogenmod, not CyanogenOS.

I’m not a Google apologist. They are way to big and powerful not to show at least some concern about their involvement in any project. However, from everything I have read and seen, they really have been acting fairly and appropriately. (Although I still maintain that they could have spoken to Cyanogen directly without a C&D and then issued an open letter to the dev community explaining things and asking politely for people to stop the illegal practices, after which they could have taken off the gloves and really threatened people who wouldn’t play fairly.)

I’m all for the guys who want to replace all the proprietary stuff in the standard builds with OSS. I’m all for it in my desktop software, and it’d be great to have a fully opensourced mobile OS too. The problem with device drivers is a sticky issue. It is on the desktop as well. Here’s where Google and the rest of the OHA could show an incredible amount of good will toward all by pressuring the hardware component manufacturers to release their drivers as OSS. (I’d like Dell to do that for laptop/desktop machines too.) But if that doesn’t happen, I don’t think it should stop people from trying to do it themselves. More power to the Open Android Alliance!

By: AGx-07_162

AGx-07_162 — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 23:47:14 +0000

Sometimes I think the way Google saw the term “open source” is more of an Anti-Apple in the way (from what I have heard) they filter what apps are and arent allowed on their iPhone.

And I agree completely with Jerry.