Isn't this is a general trend with Android/Cyanogenmod hackers? If you go on something like xda-developers then there's a sticky saying "please don't post GPL violations".
Early Cyanogen releases were fast and loose with redistribution of Google proprietary apps, which got the author in a spot of trouble IIRC. Right now the distribution of these ROMS is IMO pretty suspect - they include whole swathes of binary blobs that they really shouldn't be redistributing willy nilly. If you want the proprietary pieces that belong to the manufacturer of your phone, you should have to pull them off yourself. The ROM creators shouldn't be pulling these bits off of their phones and re-distributing them.
The fact that so many prebaked ROMs are distributed though megaupload-alikes is a bit of a giveaway as to the general philosophy of that community.
Cyanogenmod ROMs aren't distributed with Google's apps anymore. If you want Google's Play store and Gmail, one needs to download and install a separate archive (I just did that yesterday :))
Of course, the distribution of that archive is still suspect. The licensing of those apps is the only leverage Google has for controlling the companies that distribute Android, like Samsung. It is meant for the likes of Samsung and HTC, not Cyanogenmod, which is why I think Google lets it be for now.
On the other hand if you want to use bare-bones Android, the biggest pain one experiences is the lack of Google Play. I can live without Gmail, I can live without Google Maps, but unfortunately most apps are only on Google Play, which is awkward, given that as a publisher with Android it isn't a big effort to publish apps on your own website, in addition to Google Play.
Unfortunately, bare-bones Android may get barer and more awkward over time, if they migrate more services from the core OS into "Google Play Services". As an example, the new geofencing APIs that they announced at the last Google I/O (intended to replace the buggy core "proximity alerts") are part of "Google Play Services", not the core OS --- and therefore not available on devices which aren't part of the Play borg.
(To be fair, their announced reason for this is that it gives them a way to make these APIs available on devices that aren't getting regular manufacturer updates. That said, I'm sure it hasn't escaped their attention that it also adds a point of differentiation between Play-enabled devices and, say, the Kindle Fire...)
> As an example, the new geofencing APIs that they announced at the last Google I/O (intended to replace the buggy core "proximity alerts") are part of "Google Play Services", not the core OS --- and therefore not available on devices which aren't part of the Play borg.
The location services framework in Android is deliberately tied to Google APIs for using address and location resolution, while gathering location sensor data is not. Wouldn't it make sense further evolutions of that API also only work with Google APIs?
Meh. Don't know how much this really sucks the usability out of things. On my Android, I confess I'm already so bought in to the Amazon ecosystem that I almost resent the room that Play and the likes are taking up. Is particularly obnoxious when the phone complains that I need to make room, and the only crap I can't move to an SD card is the Google stuff.
There's f-droid [1], "app store" or rather an actual FOSS repository with Android apps. It doesn't have all the apps play store has, of course, but lot of interesting apps can be found there. (I'm currently addicted to Frozen Bubble)
The ROM scene has always been a grey (verging on black) area when it comes to IP, however the enthusiast scene for the original WinMo and Android has helped the market in general.
There has always been a bit of a gentleman's agreement with the manufacturers that if we went too far, we'd be slapped back, but thankfully this has only happened a couple of times.
Indeed, the manufacturers themselves have been known to leak ROMS to the scene on purpose for various reasons. Sony even works directly with the hackers themselves.
> The ROM scene has always been a grey (verging on black) area when it comes to IP
Speak for yourself.
There are two scenes: The binary modder scene, where people retro-fit vendor-created and provided firmware-images with their own modifications. Commonly referred to as "Photoshop ROMs". This scene is clearly grey at best.
However, there is another scene: The one based on AOSP source and derivates of it. This scene lives on Github and similar places where open source is shared and reused freely, as intended.
This is driven by serious developers and focus is on doing things cleanly, properly and reliably.
Most successful and widely deployed ROMs (like Cyanogenmod) are based on this scene, and there is nothing grey or remotely shady about it.
Cyanogenmod) are based on this scene, and there is nothing grey or remotely shady about it.
So when Cyanogenmod was distributing the play store apps illegally there was nothing shady going on? It isn't like they suddenly decided to do the right thing, it was a C&D from Google that got them to stop.
That was four years ago. I think that's long enough to make a distinction between "they started out doing something they weren't supposed to" and "there's nothing shady about Cyanogenmod."
And yet people still point out that Volkswagen, Hugo Boss, and IBM worked with the Nazis and that Microsoft had been convicted of an illegal monopoly even though that all happened decades ago.
Yeah no, MSFT was fined €561M as recently as March this year on account of failing to comply with an agreement made in 2009 (to offer users a choice of web browser) following an antitrust case settlement to the tune of €860M in 2007 and a complaint from Opera Software about the missing choice screen.
Don't get me started on the bullshit that is the browser ballot. Their anti-trust case in the US was at least based on something relevant to the PC market, not just a money-grab by a government board trying to prove its relevance.
You do have a point, but I don't think that diminishes my point. 4 years is not a long amount of time to forget the negative actions of an organization.
Pointing out the past and claiming that things are still that way are different things. Clearly, Volkswagen is no longer building vehicles for the Nazis. It is still an interesting historical fact.
Seriously? You're calling Godwin just because I mentioned the word Nazi? Please do the world a favor and stop using that term unless you understand what it means. No one was compared to Nazis, no reference to genocide was mentioned, and it certainly was not flamebait. The point was that the world doesn't forget the negative associations of an organization just because four years have passed. Hyperbole can be a very effective way to make a point.
Godwin does not mean what you seem to think it means.
"Godwin's law applies especially to inappropriate, inordinate, or hyperbolic comparisons of other situations (or one's opponent) with Nazis – often referred to as "playing the Hitler card"."
Your point is obscured by making a hyperbolic claim that ignores the actual impact of the wrong action.
Yes. Comparison. That's the difference. I didn't say "Cyanogenmod is like Hitler". I said "IBM did work for Hitler 60 years ago, and people still remember that." If anything, I compared Cyanogenmod to IBM.
Using the word Nazi or Hitler does not equal a Godwin. The fact that this needs to be explained so damn often really just shows that we need a new law. Freehunter's Law says that any discussion that mentions the words Nazi or Hitler will invariably get someone to invoke Godwin's Law improperly and make a fool out of himself.
Again: Never made a comparison to Hitler. If you're speaking English as a second language, I'll forgive you.
Copyright and IP is such a mess that everything is "shady" for any entity if looked from the right (or wrong) angle or country.
I don't think that there has been actual harm and malicious intent in the redistribution of the apps, just the fact that few people can afford the legal counsel fee to understand a licence.
The open source subset of Android is not practically usable though. There aren't many (any?) devices that work usefully without a lot of proprietary bits.
While true, you don't need to supply the actual copyrighted/licensed binaries across the internet.
You can just supply a shell-script to extract them from the device, and its assumed that interested parties wanting to build the code has the device themselves.
Feel free to call it a loophole, but I don't have a problem with that and definitely don't see it as something shady.
True but from what I understand the images they put out have all the bits baked in. You literally just flash the new firmware onto the device. That means they are distributing bits they don't have licence to distribute.
> The open source subset of Android is not practically usable though.
And that will certainly remain the case if everybody ships their little backyard shed "rom" with proprietary bits included. If there is no demand for replacements, replacements will not be made.
>The fact that so many prebaked ROMs are distributed though megaupload-alikes is a bit of a giveaway as to the general philosophy of that community.
What? Hosting (relatively) large files, on services that can deliver those around the world at faster than dialup is now some how bad? So I suppose all those companies using CDNs are also horrible and despicable. I mean, how dare they use servers that are well connected!
Less fly-by-night-ish projects seem to have little trouble finding mirroring that 1) isn't shared by so much warez 2) doesn't make me visit a webpage and make me do a CAPTCHA, 3) doesn't blast me with shady as hell popups and advertising.
The majority of Android ROMs (at least from the likes of XDA) are hosted at one of a few places -- goo.im being (probably) the most prevalent. There is 1) little to no warez (I've never seen any), 2) no CAPTCHA and 3) no pop ups and only text ads on goo.im.
Another popular one Dev-host (http://d-h.st/) also features none of the cruft you complain about.
CyanogenMOD (http://get.cm/) is hosted through several large partners and has no captchas, ads or warez.
I'm glad to see that things have improved to some degree. I just breifly visited one of those though (androtransfer.com) and it does have the shit I am talking about... "Please wait while we prepare your download! 10 second(s) left"... how about "No."Proper mirroring does not give you this sort of cruft and hassle.
I'll admit, the situation is improved because nobody tried to sell me a penis pump when I visited the site. No wake me when the solution to every other minor problem is not "Sort through this 500+ page forum thread, and find the guy who posted a 'fix' without sourcecode that comes in the form of a several rar files from Mega, adding up to 2GB. Oh and by the way, he even included a bunch of pirated gameboy roms for you too!"
They're providing a rather expensive service (Bandwidth and server costs ain't cheap) for free. The wait times are simply rate-limiting in nicest possible way. Also, it's laughable that you think "Wait X seconds" isn't "proper" mirroring, I guess you never use SourceForge? Or are they also filled with warez and penis pumps?
>"Sort through this 500+ page forum thread, and find the guy who posted a 'fix' without sourcecode that comes in the form of a several rar files from Mega, adding up to 2GB. Oh and by the way, he even included a bunch of pirated gameboy roms for you too!"
You apparently don't give a shit about how things actually work (for the most part); you'd rather disparage them. How about you hop on over and see how many of the "minor" problems are actually fixed in the mainstream distros?
> I guess you never use SourceForge? Or are they also filled with warez and penis pumps?
I thought it was widely understood these days that sourceforge is shit. What is this, 2002? Finding yourself on a sourceforge page is one of the highest quality indicators of "maybe I should make sure I'm trying to do this the right way" that there is, almost entirely since most active projects have run away from it. The piss-poor way it handles downloads is just scratching the surface of sourceforges issues. They do not provide quality hosting.
That is how you mirror a project. Not with shit that requires me to use a javascript enabled browser. I can wget or torrent any linux distro I can think of. Why is quality hosting unavailable to Android development? I'm guessing, but probably because they play fast and loose with legal shit. Or maybe it is because no companies or universities are interested in being associated with it... probably because they play fast and loose with legal shit...
I know all about their bugtracking systems. Their bug tracking is not my concern; the community is my concern.
Open source is awesome, yay! It's given Google, Samsung and android device manufactures a hugely successful platform that they would have otherwise had to build from the ground up. And how do they repay the community? Binary blobs. While staying true to the letter of the license they circumvent the spirit of it.
I don't condone GPL violations. I also don't care about distributing binary blobs. Without them there wouldn't be alternative android distros.
Early Cyanogen releases were fast and loose with redistribution of Google proprietary apps, which got the author in a spot of trouble IIRC. Right now the distribution of these ROMS is IMO pretty suspect - they include whole swathes of binary blobs that they really shouldn't be redistributing willy nilly. If you want the proprietary pieces that belong to the manufacturer of your phone, you should have to pull them off yourself. The ROM creators shouldn't be pulling these bits off of their phones and re-distributing them.
The fact that so many prebaked ROMs are distributed though megaupload-alikes is a bit of a giveaway as to the general philosophy of that community.