The essence of open-source is organized resistance to the crippling effects of runaway proprietary claims over otherwise useful and highly-capable technology. The combative comments here in evidence are like an allergic reaction to a paradigm this community exists to subvert: Motorola is asserting walled-garden protectionism over hardware that owes its existence to a passionate distaste for that very behavior.

Putting up roadblocks to exploration won’t prevent it–it just makes the stakes higher for everyone while helping exactly no-one. Motorola’s bottom line would be better-served by leaving the bootloader wide open and including a utility on the driver disc–or on their web site–that can flash a factory-fresh recovery ROM over USB: Fix it yourself, cause we ain’t fixin’ it for you. Most of us know that Motorola/Verizon doesn’t owe us any help if we get into trouble messing around inside the black box. Anybody that would leap in without planning his way out doesn’t doesn’t deserve the charity of service under warranty; no-one here thinks otherwise.

Corporate hypocrites talk about freedom like they own it, but flag-waving is all they really understand…every opportunity they get they try to infect others with their sense of moral obligation to obey authority. If you like going through life without having to think about anything, go get an iPhone and buy the Fox News app. You don’t get to support those who would take away our right to think for ourselves. Not here, anyway.

If they are going to lock us out at the bootstraps then they should at least give droid users the choice of swapping a vanilla rom.

Android moves fast they want their hardware to age prematurely = the landfill evil.

They are simply loosing the sales of us people who understand reusability.

because you (the user) is stupid, case in point, Windows users, 20% to 50% have malware installed on their systems, and don’t even know it… 5% to 20% of users, will fall for a phishing scam sometime in the next 2 years…

98% of all users get junk email, when they don’t have to. yet they don’t have to without ever using any type of filter or security software. (worse 20% or more click on the crap, even though it ensures they will receive even more junk email)

and worst of all, 20% of all applications in the Android’s app store collect personal information from you the user that can possibly be used to drain your bank accounts of everything you have….

you dumb **(*s

Ultimately, I want app development to be open source. And I would like to see all phones ship with STOCK Android. I’d also like to see these manufacturers make their own bloatware easily removable. If they want to pre-install it, fine. But at least make it removable. I don’t think they should be allowed to block custom ROMs and then also force you to have apps you don’t want.

This isn’t a huge restriction. You really don’t need to do anything to this device considering how stacked it already is. Can we give a hand to Motorola for that major blur overhaul. The widgets look and run great. These people worked hard and listened. Let us not make our owns devices unattractive just because we can’t run a few roms.

Its one thing to run roms on an outdated device to get more out of it, but honestly you can update for a fair price, and considering I want Google to one day beat out Apple. I would prefer we did update, but hey guys just go grab a htc device and root away. Lets not judge harshly strong hardware. :)

Somebody will figure out how to root this phone, just like they did the Milestone. And once it is rooted, you can easily remove the bloatware and have it running super smooth. You may not put in a custom OS with extra features but you will still have control over a great phone.