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In an effort to strengthen their development team it seems Sony has been scouring the interwebz for talented developers and in at least once case offered a meeting to infamous Android hacker Koush. Without much hesitation, Koush declined any request for an interview. He says he turned down the offer “out of principle.” More exactly, he turned down the offer due to “Sony’s recent treatment of fellow hacker George Hotz.” That’s the even more infamous Geohot of iPhone jailbreaking and Sony lawsuit fame who recently voiced interest in Android, himself, if only as a means to exact revenge on Sony through the hacking of the upcoming Sony Ericsson Xperia Play.
Now that, boys and girls, is what we call solidarity.
[via GadgetsDNA]
+1 Koushik!
Hell Yeah
Without him my DX just wouldn’t be as good!
YEAH!!!
im about to send a donate to koush…on principle! :)
Way to go
That dude has got some friggin stones :) way to go bro. tell the machine to go fist itself. try to power bomb one hacker and try to play nice with the next? BS.
That’s not a person that we as a community can afford to lose, he makes the most widely distributed custom recovery for android by a long shot, and what would android do without clockwork recovery? Have a shitload of bricked phones thats what. I’m not saying he would stop if he got the job but ya never know what they might force him to do!
Wow. Way to go. Not too many people live on principles anymore!
He’s the man
I think I used to play Halo with that guy.
Good for him. Nice to see someone stand for their principles for a change.
Koush, you are the man!
Now, let’s kush up some blunts and cheer!
Nice to see that not everyone sells out these days.
Way to go Koush! Now, that’s what it’s all about, solidarity!
Kumar, go find Harrold so you guys can go to White Castle and get me my burgers.
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But on topic, brave man, this shows a strong backbone, and heart. This young man will do well if he continues down this path.
Mmmmm… tasty Rom Manager. ;)
Instead of turning them down “out of principle”, perhaps he could have found himself in a unique position to better shape Sony’s attitude toward development. Talk about an opportunity lost.
Power to da Droid!
^^THIS. He couldve brought about change in thinkin at Sony which would honestly been more beneficial in the long run instead of “sticking it to the man” as some of you have put it. What woul help the development community more having a bunch of big companies against us and having hackers treated as criminals or having those same hackers in high ranking positions at those big companies and changing their thinking on the dev+hacking community. Think about it….
Yeah, how dare Sony be concerned about the results a hackable console could have on their business model and partner relationships. I wouldn’t work for those D-bags either. ~sarcasm.
I’m amazed by his principles here… A gig at Sony after they sought you out? Take cajones to stand by your principles and turn down that prospect.
Right on Koush!
lol. awesome.
Koush is the man. He’s been keeping my D1 fresh and renewed with life. Keep up the good work man!
Having him at Sony wouldn’t have changed anything. They probably would have wanted him to make their stuff harder to hack. Sony is focused on profits not becoming buddies with the hacking community.
To the naysayers regarding Koush talking to Sony – no, I seriously doubt that there is any way in hell one person is going to “change Sony’s views.
That aside, I am pretty sure that he doesn’t need Sony – I’m sure he is doing well by his apps (and rightfully so) we need him as an independent developer FAR more than just having him turn into a number at Sony. As Kaizzle9 mentioned, without him and his CMR, there would be a shit-ton of bricked Android handsets out there. Yes, there are other ways, and I know some people don’t like CMR for whatever reason, we all understand that, so save the “all you have to do is A,B, and C instead” – save it. CMR is as easy as it gets. If you’re one of those people who use CMR but are too cheap to shell out the 3 or 4 dollars for it. Punch yourself in the face until your hand breaks. Just my 2¢
As someone who used to work at Sony (in a contracted in-house tech position that resulted in my dealing with every level of Sony North America’s staff), I can guarantee that Koush working with Sony would not have “changed their culture” or any other absurd crap like that.
The entire company, from almost the ground up, is infatuated with the smell of its own farts. They really do believe their own marketing, and do believe that Sony itself can neither do any wrong nor charge too much for their name being on the side of their products.
Good for Koush!
Pretty awesome story.
lol. you guys have such short term thinking its ridiculous.
Yeah, good job Douche, or Kouche, or Couch, or whatever you stupid hacker name is. You just turned down a legal way to make a shit ton of easy money. All you people talking about “principle” here are fucking retarded. It doesn’t matter what SONY’s view is. The fact is they own certain shit and don’t want it to be hacked. Plain and simple. It’s people like this Kunt, or Kloud fellow that turn the leaderboards of Homefront on launch day into a punch line. I log onto multiplayer Homefront ON LAUNCH DAY and see 12 level 75’s with less than 10 hours of playing time. It’s fucks like that making the world of gaming less fun every day. And it’s fucks like Koush doing the very same thing in the mobile industry. Quit hacking and learn to live by the rules you self absorbed, ungrateful, little geeks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uYWYWPc9HU
im sure they would of just asked him a bunch of questions to make him look bad
@Contraus: That would be will in good if we didn’t purchase the device we want to modify. Fact is, a lumber yard can not tell you how to use their wood, even Adolf Steve can not tell you how to use your iPhone.. jailbreaking is legal. Sony is just abusing the wording of the law to bypass the intent set by the iPhone case.
To everyone else, I hope you guys will not be buying ps3’s and upcoming ps4’s. If you really believe in the cause, we all will hafta make sacrifices for it to be more then ‘believing’.
SONY IS GARBAGE! Koush, keep doin the good work man.
I havent had anything from sony last longer than a year. usually less. Sad that a company thats so garbage is full of themselves.
Contraus, these are not the hackers you are looking for…
But seriously, the little kids doing the crap you’re talking about aren’t exactly the same as guys like this. This would be the type of guy to make a patch to fix a problem on a broken game, or to release an add-on to add some functionality or whatever. The little farts you’re talking about are just some stupid kids who are just griefers and nothing more…the lowest form of life in the gaming community.
@Len, well said..
people dont realize that a computer can do more than a ps3 and so on will never be able to do.
ps3 was what like $399 when it came out?
a nice quad core barebones setup is like $299 at Newegg?
hmmmm, how to decide..
Good for him. More people should be like him. Far too many people sell out these days. I hope this works out in his best interest and opens bigger and better doors for him as well as other devs out there that make our phones better than stock could ever be.
Thanks for sticking to your guns.
Good for him. Love it. We need more people to be like that. In a world ruled by corruption, money, and greed, it’s nice to see this.
If anyone takes the time to follow the links, and Koush’s Twitter feeds, he wasn’t offered a job, they just wanted to interview him. What he is doing IS NOT illegal. The man not only saved a ton of Androids from soft-bricking, he also saved the manufacturers, carriers, and underwriters money by people being able to easily run a recovery on their phones. Besides, even if he was offered a job, just look at ROM Manager alone, the premium license has between 50,000-250,000 downloads – just on that app. Even if it is “only” 50,001 downloads x$4-Google’s cut, he is still doing very well for himself on ROM manager alone, and that isn’t counting the DX/2 bootstraps, Klaxon alarm clock, and his other apps. Keep up the awesome work Koush!
The day of proprietary closed platforms is over. Having worked on them it is difficult to get support because if you run into a problem even the support engineers may not be able to figure it out. With open source like Android I can usually find an answer except of course if it really is an Android and then we have to wait (and wait and wait) for the fix or work around. In one case on a proprietary platform the title was failed and I told them to run the same test on the demo disc that came with the device and quietly the title suddenly passed.
Turned down a oppourtunity to be actually paid for developing? what?
What a badass! That is awesome.
guess it’s time to buy some koush.
solid, dude.
LAD.
Yeah! Let’s screw Japan even more! Great timing koushebag.
Well, typical it is that people over-react without really KNOWING what is going on, reading the article and elsewhere, gaining insight and knowledge, THAN commenting!
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Some have much learning to do as the term HACKER/HACKING is not the same as doing anything illegal. In loose terms, it is making something do something outside of it’s operating spectrum or purpose, or what someone will allow you to do with it. Fair Use Doctrine is WELL established without even getting into the Open Platform Development… Whatever…
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That said, it is good to see that this particular person was smart enough to stay outside the clutches of one of the biggest problems he could cause himself. Remember, there is NOTHING good that could come from talking to a company that just brought Major Legal action against another who operates in the same sphere as you do. He’s also competent enough to know he can make it alone and not need any handouts from Big Corp. wanna be nice guys (Sony) lol.
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Android is and will be always… FREE!
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Some of the Closed loop proprietary OS world have real issues dealing with this, but truthfully, the BEST thing happening to the consumer is Android! It has blown off the door’s to the perception that being open is bad… hopefully this trend will continue and we’ll see the demise of MS and iOS, etc.
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Anyway, Kudos!
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Just my $.02
:)
Contraus must work for Sony.
Hacker and principles…what a contradiction in terms.
I don’t really think this will affect sales of the ps4, nor could I honestly say I won’t buy another sony product. I personally love my ps3, and it really only got better the last couple years. Truth is blu-ray was the deciding factor of ps3 being dominant, and for almost 2 years the ps3 was the cheapest blu-ray player.
We all know pc gaming is graphically better, but that won’t stop people from buying consoles. Console gaming has a different feel from pc and thats why it has lasted this long. And there was NOTHING comparable PC wise as the ps3 when it launched…not for $600 with wifi, bluetooth, memory card readers, and essentially an 8core processor
@33…you are a MORON!!!! Show me even a third of the games (numebers not titles) the PS3 has on a PC please. Im not a PC hater…I love it and Im actually a PC gamer and dont own any consoles but you seriously must have pulled that statement out of your ass dude.
@Matt Where to start? The PC has almost all of the good games. Batman Arkham Asylum, GTA IV, CoD, Assassin’s Creed/II, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed/II, and exclusives like WoW, StarCraft II, MineCraft, RIFT, and Civilization V. Plus, PCs are always backwards compatible, so you can play everything from X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter through Civ IV as well as the new games.