Database Info

Possible PSP-esque war between Google/Tmobile and hackers?

What does everyone think will happen with future revisions of Android in regards to the fork between the stock G1s with OTA updates and the hacked G1s with manual updates with the test keys?
Hopefully this doesn't turn into Sony's militant locking down of the PSP via every firmware upgrade. Even though I never owned a PSP, I thought it was absolutely insane that Sony would try so hard to keep people from using their purchased equipment in any way they wanted to.
I totally understand that Google had to release RC30 to shut down a GIGANTIC security exploit that could have (but not likely) been used compromise phones. I'm sure it's in their interest to keep a homogeneous G1 userbase but would they actively try to relock rooted phones?
I'm hoping they just leave the rooted G1s alone. Mostly because we bought the phones and they are OURS. We are obligated to stay with Tmobile until the contract is up because the price is subsidized but we are not obligated (in my opinion) to retain the software they were shipped with. Obviously if my phone has a software problem I won't be calling Tmobile. On the other hand, if there is a hardware defect I'm certainly reflashing RC30 and sending it back under warranty.
I would like to hear everyone's opinion. I think it was great that Tmobile UK was good enough to open a dialog about possibly allowing root access but I don't think they really understand what "root access" is or care as long as they sell phones under contract. I don't think Google really cares either since they have open sourced all of the OS that we are modifying which is in the spirit of Open Source Software anyway. I think as long as they get their marketshare, they will be happy.

I dont think so first off the psp hackers down load games so the dont have to pay for them they lose millions each year on the hackers...next i dont thnk that google would do this but t-moble might.But in my opinion i think they will as soon as they start hacking the pay apps. that will start later this year.

HOGWILD said:
I dont think so first off the psp hackers down load games so the dont have to pay for them they lose millions each year on the hackers
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Hogwild hit the nail right on the head. I don't think T-Mo/HTC will engage in a drawn out battle to "steal" back root simply because there is no real financial motivation to do so. I'm of the mind that it's best not to begin speculating unless one of the aforementioned company takes a step in that direction. There's no point whipping up another possible flame-war over something that might never happen.

Ya I agree they are our phones 1 thing you left out not everybody is under contract some ppl paid full price on a prepaid 90 service plan then they get their unlock code. Some people didn't qualify for the upgrade price of 179$ and some people are under contract eiither of all three it is owned by the user the day they signed or paid. Tmobile won't take back a used g1 for failure to honor the 2 year agreement they will bill the customer.
So the whole open source push... and market. There and hundreds of. Thousands of programmers who make programs for the love of advancing "things" look how popular sourceforge is. So you get people who will create a program and demand a nominal fee say 14.95 the dev only gets 70% of the price and the wireless carrier get 30% for nothing. I . Defently there being an underground "market place" that bypasses that standard one to allow people to download free apps. The most exciting thing that everyone is about the market being a paid app is stopping all the comments of the retarded people in the market place
My 2 cents

diabolical28 said:
The most exciting thing that everyone is about the market being a paid app is stopping all the comments of the retarded people in the market place
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There are a lot of idiots in the world with money to waste. Rest assured, the paid apps will have retarded comments as well.

qft
rabble:rabble

Wow I hate people that don't know what they talking bout. I wanna clear up a few thing. Being a psp dev I can tell you it wasn't bout the hacking and homebrew. the psp updates were to stop piracy. Btw most exploit on psp were by sony. If you own a psp atlease you would know a little about the scene. Secondly, the root bug is dangerous to us. Google own dev are helping us htc people are leaking tools and t-mobile always let us screw them over. So no it not gonna be no war going on it all for our safety untill the software is right. As you can see we're like test bunnys and when a bug you should be greatful that they release update. So while I love having root access it not that serious right now it just would be right to compare this to the iphone jailbreak scene. Once paid app are here I wouldn't be shock if update start coming to block test key and resigning to respect developer work. Read before posting and short answer no unless as needed

There's not going to be a homogenous Android ecosystem to begin with because each carrier will tailor it to their own needs, and possibly to each handset.

danguyf said:
There's not going to be a homogenous Android ecosystem to begin with because each carrier will tailor it to their own needs, and possibly to each handset.
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Correct. And you can bet that there will be handsets running builds of Android not maintained by Google which will not run Android Market. Whatever carrier releases it will want to funnel that 30% revenue to themselves. I'm concerned that that fracturing of the ecosystem will impede overall market acceptance. And i'm not even talking about the inevitable outcome of Android "strains" that slowly become sdk incompatible with each other.
Here's a posting I made on android-platform and Dianne Hackborn's response:
Right, I'm thinking along the device manufacturer side of things. As
an imperfect analogy, is the Android team okay with manufacturers
producing their own Android builds which may be slightly incompatible
with each other (a la Symbian's various flavors), or will all
manufacturers be encouraged/required to adhere to some technical
requirements checklists in order to brand their phone as Android-
powered? (more like say Windows Mobile).
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We won't, this is something we will be actively discouraging (or from a
positive perspective, doing whatever we can to encourage android devices
to be compatible).
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Of course with an open source project "actively discouraging" can only go so far...

jashsu said:
Whatever carrier releases it will want to funnel that 30% revenue to themselves.
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The carriers already get that 30%.
From the android dev blog
"Starting in early Q1, developers will also be able to distribute paid apps in addition to free apps. Developers will get 70% of the revenue from each purchase; the remaining amount goes to carriers and billing settlement fees—Google does not take a percentage. We believe this revenue model creates a fair and positive experience for users, developers, and carriers."

From what I've heard from Google folks, they aren't that interested in the root thing, that is more a carrier issue. However, the way people originally got root was a serious issue. Not directly because you could get root, but because it was an outright silly bug than could potentially raise havoc on your device if you happened to type the wrong thing on your keyboard.

JesusFreke said:
The carriers already get that 30%.
From the android dev blog
"Starting in early Q1, developers will also be able to distribute paid apps in addition to free apps. Developers will get 70% of the revenue from each purchase; the remaining amount goes to carriers and billing settlement fees—Google does not take a percentage. We believe this revenue model creates a fair and positive experience for users, developers, and carriers."
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I imagine the billing settlement fees could be rather sizeable. I don't run a credit card processing company, but i've seen $.20 - $.30 per transaction thrown around. That's in line with Paypal's fees.
We'll see if other manufacturer/carrier matchups continue to use Android Market. I wouldn't be surprised to see them create their own markets though, simply because if it's possible and there's the slightest financial incentive to do so, eventually someone will do it.

I was in the PSP scene for a long time, admin at one of the largest PSP sites, net admin on the largest PSP IRC server, and had several contacts within Sony's Playstation department. So I know how the scene went pretty well.
Sony did not want homebrew for multiple reasons. The obvious one is ISO playback. No matter what they did, warez was possible. Even back before we had perfected the actual emulation, we could simply patch calls to disc0:/ to ms0:/ and load the EBOOT. If we hadn't figured out how (the first one to truly do it was UMD Emulator, which would patch many of the PSP calls to make it MUCH smoother/more compatible), we could simply expand on this.
The second reason is that we were stepping on their toes, so to speak. They wanted to have many more downloadable minigames that could be booted off of the memstick, something we did years before them. I doubt they liked that we were doing what they planned, and doing it much better/faster.
Thirdly, they were responsible for all bricked devices. Although their unbricking process has always been easy, it costs them time/shipping. It's still a pain and costly for them to do it massively.
This is why they combated it on the PSP so much. On the standard Playstations, they've never had to worry about it this much. They didn't have memory cards that you could easily throw ISOs on, they didn't have any easily loaded software that would allow you to boot them, etc. You had to buy hardware devices (hdloader, the swap program (ffs can't remember the name), or modchips). Pirating the PSP was SO much easier.
Now, onto the G1... a Google employee has already (off the record, speaking for himself, not Google) that they should have just given us root access, especially if HTC was going to be so careless with their NBH images.
If every one was given root access, cracking paid applications would be much easier. Well, that is the belief. In reality, cracking them will be a sinch. With easily done byte code modification, and resigning the APK, I doubt there's an application that CAN'T be cracked. As long as you could install apps from browser/SD card, you can crack them. Even if they locked it down to market only, we could spoof DNS servers and run "unofficial" markets with cracked applications. This wouldn't require root access at all.
(excuse any typos, it's 10F outside atm and I'm trying to smoke.)

Gary13579 said:
I was in the PSP scene for a long time, admin at one of the largest PSP sites, net admin on the largest PSP IRC server, and had several contacts within Sony's Playstation department. So I know how the scene went pretty well.
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I know you, your from www.psp-hacks.com huh Dash Hacks Network is my only source lol hey didn't you recently do some homebrew app i remember seeing something bout you on qj. lol your coding for g1 now? maybe a nice irc for g1?

aron4588 said:
I know you, your from www.psp-hacks.com huh Dash Hacks Network is my only source lol hey didn't you recently do some homebrew app i remember seeing something bout you on qj. lol your coding for g1 now? maybe a nice irc for g1?
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The last time I used my PSP was a year ago, as a flash drive so I could reformat my computer. I haven't actually *used* it in years, so anything you saw on QJ wasn't about the real Gary .
But yes that's me, and I was an admin at Dash Hacks.

aron4588 said:
I know you, your from www.psp-hacks.com huh Dash Hacks Network is my only source lol hey didn't you recently do some homebrew app i remember seeing something bout you on qj. lol your coding for g1 now? maybe a nice irc for g1?
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Yes please a "full irc client would be nice." there is a "irc client" if you can call it that in the market called Firc it is a neat program then you come to figure out the dev is running the only channel it can join as ops and Perm bans any user not on a G1. Also at his discretion. Seems to much like a plug to me soon enough he will add an ADbot you watch and people with accidently click the hell out of the ad links .

diabolical28 said:
Yes please a "full irc client would be nice." there is a "irc client" if you can call it that in the market called Firc it is a neat program then you come to figure out the dev is running the only channel it can join as ops and Perm bans any user not on a G1. Also at his discretion. Seems to much like a plug to me soon enough he will add an ADbot you watch and people with accidently click the hell out of the ad links .
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Lol what? fIRC lets you connect to any server and any channel.

diabolical28 said:
Yes please a "full irc client would be nice." there is a "irc client" if you can call it that in the market called Firc it is a neat program then you come to figure out the dev is running the only channel it can join as ops and Perm bans any user not on a G1. Also at his discretion. Seems to much like a plug to me soon enough he will add an ADbot you watch and people with accidently click the hell out of the ad links .
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http://code.google.com/p/androidirc/

Thanks XDA for all your help.

Linky to story
Wow, so we help HTC get to the place they are today (and don't underestimate our contribution) and this is the thanks.
Glad I'm getting a Dell in 2 months.
(Please tell me I misunderstand!)
MOD EDIT: PLEASE MIND THE LANGUAGE YOU USE ON XDA. YOUR TITLE WAS NOT SUITABLE AT ALL. EDITED. PLEASE CONSIDER THIS A WARNING, BREAKING THE RULES AGAIN CAN LEAD TO A VACATION.PLEASE CONTROL YOUR EMOTIONS.

for some reason i feel the opposite towards this.
I am glad that they put a hardware chip that can bring the phone back to factory default settings. They probably did this because so many people had bricked their phones with no real way to get them back up and running so they had to send them in.... This way it should eliminate that whole process....
why this is good?
It will be cracked, and will give modders room to store custom roms or clockwork recovery on this... or.....
A MOD CHIP!!!! imagine a small mod chip that could enable or disable the chip. You muck up your phone, hit the switch... go back to factory defaults.

Reminds me of the old Playstations where I had to go get them chipped to be modded.

First off it was a pretty good read. Personally I would take this as yet another reason to keep up the awesome work done by the fine programmers here on XDA! Give them something else to "access & modify".
All in all, I never got the feeling of "eff off". But then again, that was just me.

What a whiner. Every day I'm more and more disgusted by some of the people on here. What have you personally done to help HTC aside from maybe buy a phone of theirs? What have they done for you? Oh, they gave you a miracle of modern technology. The ability to have a phone in your pocket which is amazing by itself, forget the fact that it can look up maps, browse the internet, play music and videos, etc.
What about people who don't even have phones?
You're sitting here complaining because of issues rooting a phone which YOU DONT EVEN OWN or intend to buy judging from your comments.
Let me also ask you this: Is the ability to root a phone a feature that is advertised or standard on any devices? Are phone manufactures supposed to be supporting this?

deathsled said:
What a whiner. Every day I'm more and more disgusted by some of the people on here. What have you personally done to help HTC aside from maybe buy a phone of theirs? What have they done for you? Oh, they gave you a miracle of modern technology. The ability to have a phone in your pocket which is amazing by itself, forget the fact that it can look up maps, browse the internet, play music and videos, etc.
What about people who don't even have phones?
You're sitting here complaining because of issues rooting a phone which YOU DONT EVEN OWN or intend to buy judging from your comments.
Let me also ask you this: Is the ability to root a phone a feature that is advertised or standard on any devices? Are phone manufactures supposed to be supporting this?
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wow, you have some issues going on there don't you (Apart from not being able to read)
Pretty much anyone thats posted on here has helped in one way or another, by answering peoples technical queries etc.
Your right, I don't own the phone and I certainly intend NOT to buy one now. I was going to be tempted as I prefer open phones rather than locked down ... but not now. If I'm going to be locked down I may as well get a good one. If your on these boards then you must know that HTC "stock" roms are usualy rubbish. Buy this at your peril.
No it's not an advertised feature but HTC have unofficialy endorsed this site, so they want there cake and eat it?
and what an irrelevant thing to say:
"What about people who don't even have phones?"
Tell ya what, i'll raise ya, what about all the starving people in Africa!
p.s. i've not commited to the Lightning but its certainly the front runner.... unless something else comes out.

deathsled said:
What a whiner. Every day I'm more and more disgusted by some of the people on here. What have you personally done to help HTC aside from maybe buy a phone of theirs? What have they done for you? Oh, they gave you a miracle of modern technology. The ability to have a phone in your pocket which is amazing by itself, forget the fact that it can look up maps, browse the internet, play music and videos, etc.
What about people who don't even have phones?
You're sitting here complaining because of issues rooting a phone which YOU DONT EVEN OWN or intend to buy judging from your comments.
Let me also ask you this: Is the ability to root a phone a feature that is advertised or standard on any devices? Are phone manufactures supposed to be supporting this?
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Click to collapse
Would you be happy if you bought a car and told you you went allowed to mod it or accessorise it? What someone does with their own device is none of anyone elses business INCLUDING the manufacturer and provider. If I buy a sponge cake I should be able to add whatever decorations and icing I want, If I buy a PC I should be able to install whatever OS and programs I want. Is that so hard to understand?

hungry81 said:
Would you be happy if you bought a car and told you you went allowed to mod it or accessorise it? What someone does with their own device is none of anyone elses business INCLUDING the manufacturer and provider. If I buy a sponge cake I should be able to add whatever decorations and icing I want, If I buy a PC I should be able to install whatever OS and programs I want. Is that so hard to understand?
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hard to understand? not at all.
also, not true. you can't legally install apple OS on non-apple hardware. you can't legally alter an iphone. you can't legally mod your car with NOS or any number of other things.
there are still laws, and company policy to take into consideration. your argument is furthered by the fact that android is open source - but what that REALLY means is that Android can be thrown on any manufacturers phone with no limitations - NOT that any phone that has android HAS no limitations.
I WISH the world allowed us to do whatever we wanted without ourselves and our possessions, but that is simply not the case.

digibucc said:
hard to understand? not at all.
also, not true. you can't legally install apple OS on non-apple hardware. you can't legally alter an iphone. you can't legally mod your car with NOS or any number of other things.
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Actually you can. You may not be allowed to take it on public roads, but you can do whatever you want with your car on private property as long as it dosent cause injury or damage to others property or other mischief.
digibucc said:
there are still laws, and company policy to take into consideration. your argument is furthered by the fact that android is open source - but what that REALLY means is that Android can be thrown on any manufacturers phone with no limitations - NOT that any phone that has android HAS no limitations.
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And why should people sit back silently if they dont agree with this? Why should they be able to advertise the good features of the device without anyone mentioning the significant drawbacks?
digibucc said:
I WISH the world allowed us to do whatever we wanted without ourselves and our possessions, but that is simply not the case.
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At the moment You CAN do whatever you want with YOUR posessions as long as it does not cause harm or injury to other persons or property. There is no excuse for treating these devices differently. If you feel that flashing is illegal, I would have to ask what you are doing on XDA?

hungry81 said:
Would you be happy if you bought a car and told you you went allowed to mod it or accessorise it?
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Maybe if I was actually going to buy the car. What if instead I just chose to ***** about a car that I had no plans on buying?

deathsled said:
Maybe if I was actually going to buy the car. What if instead I just chose to ***** about a car that I had no plans on buying?
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OK -
so first, where did I say I was never interested in this phone? If you care to take a look at my posting history you will see I'm desperate for a phone with a keyboard. (ROM issue aside) I did take a look at this phone but the screen is just a little too small for me and I just don't personaly like Android. If this is your ONLY argument, then you know you really have no argument - move along please, nothing to see here.
Second, you seem to be missing the grand picture. You see all those subforums for each phone right? Pay particular attention to the "ROMs" subforums for EACH phone.... delete them. IF I understand this correctly, none of the new phones (assuming they all employ this) will have cooked ROMs. Why do you think most of us are here? Thats right, because HTC ROMs out of the box are crap... cooked ROMs have certainly saved my use of HTC phones and to be honest, are one of the priamary reasons I would buy a HTC phone (and have!).
Third, if you had any idea what I was talking about you would know that this is not so much about the "phone" itself but the very fact that cooked ROMs will no longer be possible. If it was about the phone, I would have posted it in the G2 section.
So in summary, (and this might be hard for you) please, try to focus on the new "feature" of the phone rather than the phone itself. Also, try to stop assuming facts like I was never going to buy this phone and really, if this is the best discussion point you can bring, please use the "unsubscribe" option - do us all a favour.

Monty Burns said:
wow, you have some issues going on there don't you (Apart from not being able to read)
Pretty much anyone thats posted on here has helped in one way or another, by answering peoples technical queries etc.
Your right, I don't own the phone and I certainly intend NOT to buy one now. I was going to be tempted as I prefer open phones rather than locked down ... but not now. If I'm going to be locked down I may as well get a good one. If your on these boards then you must know that HTC "stock" roms are usualy rubbish. Buy this at your peril.
No it's not an advertised feature but HTC have unofficialy endorsed this site, so they want there cake and eat it?
and what an irrelevant thing to say:
"What about people who don't even have phones?"
Tell ya what, i'll raise ya, what about all the starving people in Africa!
p.s. i've not commited to the Lightning but its certainly the front runner.... unless something else comes out.
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Death, I'll take your lack of acknowlegdment or response to this post as an appology.
No problem, its OK.

hungry81 said:
If you feel that flashing is illegal, I would have to ask what you are doing on XDA?
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Would you, have to?
I don't "feel" it is illegal. I don't believe it is wrong - but they have the legal right to tell me it is. that doesn't mean i won't do it anyway - I just don't lie to myself and say it is allowed... even if I believe that it should be.
there's a difference between recognizing the law and following it. I'm not saying I don't agree, that it sucks that they will lock out ROMs. BUT - I've got my Evo and it will last me for years, so i really don't care.
it's called reality. I'm not arguing that your opinion is wrong - i'm highlighting that it is just your opinion, and in this world they don't mean much.
tell you what though - you go ahead and organize the rally and once you get more than 1,000 people signed up i'll join.
let me know.

Monty Burns said:
MOD EDIT: PLEASE MIND THE LANGUAGE YOU USE ON XDA. YOUR TITLE WAS NOT SUITABLE AT ALL. EDITED. PLEASE CONSIDER THIS A WARNING, BREAKING THE RULES AGAIN CAN LEAD TO A VACATION.PLEASE CONTROL YOUR EMOTIONS.
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Hi Mr Anon,
I must have missed the bit where I swore....? I remember putting a few **'s in... oh wait, I wasn't swearing there, just pointing out that I used **'s.... er.... um.... oh dear. They are used much like Beeps on tv....
Whatever, its only a forum, gues must be the end of the world to lose access for "beeps"

Take a look!

Well this could be an issue, saw on the front page when I got on and didn't see it posted so thought I'd let y'all know: http://www.mydroidworld.com/forums/...otloaders-rooting-manufacturers-carriers.html
If T-Mobile tries this or at&t or whoever I may just switch to some other service
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA Premium App

I don't think t-mobile would ever do this. Sounds like Verizon being its usual self, greedy.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

Uchennadi said:
I don't think t-mobile would ever do this. Sounds like Verizon being its usual self, greedy.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App
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I think you are in denial...it said it was going to be implemented by the manufacturers, not the carriers...

Interesting, and not surprising. But, we must remember, some of these items are things the carriers would like to implement, and may in fact be testing, but would not necessarily pass legal/contractual muster. For instance, limiting full usage of the service/device just because one roots/modifies a device which he OWNS. Possible, yes; but unless you sign some very specific, insane terms of service agreeing to it beforehand, highly unlikely and definitely not in good faith. Especially when advertising otherwise. This of course assumes no theft of service or other nefarious activities on the carrier's network, which it owns. However, the consumer owns the device.
Now, I could see them making it as hard as possible to prevent rooting/modifying.

Just felt like sharing as this is just another worry in the simple life of owning a cell phone
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA Premium App

Yeah, I wish carriers would concentrate more on customer service and high quality; you know, like traditional values of a good company. It seems now all carriers, and I guess manufacturers to a degree, want to do is lock the consumer into something with marketing and half-truths. It is frustrating as a consumer sometimes. Of course some are worse offenders than others. Thanks for sharing.

Well yes there's no humanity in corporations there's mechanic perfection, if your the one broken piece your out. If you root your phone your warranties voided. Now if you root your phone, you don't have a phone yay! its ridiculous how companies try to control your property.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA Premium App

Honestly.. this might be google's wanting.. They say they are tightening the reins on licensing android to have better control of changes and who does what with the system to reduce "fragmentation" This is one of the reasons why they are not releasing the HC source yet. because they know that people will build the source and run it on devices not meant to run it.
I think we are starting to see the end of google being so "open"
Let's just hope they dont try to lock things down as much as apple does.. but even if they do people will ALWAYS find ways..
Think about it.. if they decide to make it MUCH harder or impossible to root your devices.. then there is little to no chance you will be able to run a "custom" rom.. I dont think it will be impossible but it will be hard work for the devs I'm sure.. So if you cant install a custom rom and have to rely on your carrier (who will now have a license agreement with google that says anything the carrier wants to change has to go through google for approval)for updates that further eliminates "fragmentation"
I really think google not releasing the HC source ad about their new licensing terms means there are big changes brewing..

Read these forums for a while and you'll notice countless threads where people completely screwed up their phones trying to root them or flash a splash screen or whatever. What do they do? They make the manufacturer pay for their mistakes. Even if they happen to have a margin of 100% on these phones, which I doubt, every user error warranty claim that happens completely erodes that profit. I'm not saying that this isn't a little unfair, android is indeed designed atm to be open to the end user, but maybe we should be placing a little bit on the shoulders of those people who come here and screw up their phones due to negligence then turn around and get an exchange at the cost of the community...
Honestly I wish they would deny those claims. Obviously the phone is linked to an account. Mark the account as a false warranty claim and close it until the phone is paid for.

graffixnyc said:
Honestly.. this might be google's wanting.. They say they are tightening the reins on licensing android to have better control of changes and who does what with the system to reduce "fragmentation" This is one of the reasons why they are not releasing the HC source yet. because they know that people will build the source and run it on devices not meant to run it.
I think we are starting to see the end of google being so "open"
Let's just hope they dont try to lock things down as much as apple does.. but even if they do people will ALWAYS find ways..
Think about it.. if they decide to make it MUCH harder or impossible to root your devices.. then there is little to no chance you will be able to run a "custom" rom.. I dont think it will be impossible but it will be hard work for the devs I'm sure.. So if you cant install a custom rom and have to rely on your carrier (who will now have a license agreement with google that says anything the carrier wants to change has to go through google for approval)for updates that further eliminates "fragmentation"
I really think google not releasing the HC source ad about their new licensing terms means there are big changes brewing..
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Well I think this may be a little off, as an article just popped up (http://androidandme.com/2011/04/unc...nch-new-market-music-camera-and-gallery-apps/) stating that google was opensourcing all launchers and stock apps in the near future and maybe even updates all out of the market so everyone can have the same launcher and apps on any phone with the android market loaded on it

Samsung and Microsoft settle Android licensing dispute

Samsung and Microsoft settle Android licensing dispute
why does it sounds like Microsoft is almost like begging for money here?
just because Android sales are waaaaaaay better than their windows phones
Samsung, htc, and Motorola have to pay back royalty fees to Microsoft for selling non Microsoft products?
what a load of crap
not much better than Apple playing a similar card with all those product bans
simply lame
they can't compete in tech innovation, so they'll use any means necessary to kill Android.... sad world we are in

What all has been happening these days!
Weird things!!!

AllGamer said:
why does it sounds like Microsoft is almost like begging for money here?
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Not begging. Extorting. I mean, is it even about some specific patents? Because at least publicly, it totally looks like MS is doing this: "Nice phone you got there... would be a shame if something, you know, happened to it..."

that too
basically it almost as if they (HTC, Samsung, Motorola, Viewsonic, Acer) are not paying Microsoft, they are not able to sell Android phones.... WTH is that?
Android is open source, Google is not charging for it, yet Microsoft is extorting the manufactures for using Android instead of Windows????
if they produce also Windows phone they only pay $10 per phone, if they don't produce any window phone, then it goes up to $15 per phone!
it's like WTF is going on?!?!?!

AllGamer said:
they can't compete in tech innovation, so they'll use any means necessary to kill Android.... sad world we are in
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Click to collapse
You could also look at it the other way - actually the way Samsung, HTC, and the legal system in several different developed countries sees it:
"Google couldn't compete with innovation - so they go steal something from Apple, something from MS, and make Android... bRRRRRRRRiliant."

The whole reason they're paying is because they themselves could not innovate. Windows phone is undoubtedly the most innovative OS on the market right now. The majority of people just either haven't tried it beyond screwing around at an ATT store for 2 minutes or because you can't customize much. The "people-centric" OS though is without a doubt the most innovative stand-alone OS.

z33dev33l said:
The whole reason they're paying is because they themselves could not innovate. Windows phone is undoubtedly the most innovative OS on the market right now. The majority of people just either haven't tried it beyond screwing around at an ATT store for 2 minutes or because you can't customize much. The "people-centric" OS though is without a doubt the most innovative stand-alone OS.
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Click to collapse
Another useful post from the ultimate android troll...hates android so much and yet can't stay out of any thread that mentions it!

Not at all, just correcting his mistake. It's not a lack of innovation on Microsoft's part that's making oem's have to pay to use android. That's androids patent infringement. Therefore it's android's lack of innovation that's causing them to have to pay Microsoft. Then again, winmo 6.5 would've been just as good as android today had they had a decent app catalogue and more importantly an easier way to reach said apps.

z33dev33l said:
Not at all, just correcting his mistake. It's not a lack of innovation on Microsoft's part that's making oem's have to pay to use android. That's androids patent infringement. Therefore it's android's lack of innovation that's causing them to have to pay Microsoft. Then again, winmo 6.5 would've been just as good as android today had they had a decent app catalogue and more importantly an easier way to reach said apps.
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Click to collapse
Exactly.
Its amazing how people think there must be a global conspiracy or something against Android. Its illegal activities that are costing the OS dearly.

z33dev33l said:
Therefore it's android's lack of innovation that's causing them to have to pay Microsoft.
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Click to collapse
Ok, if you're "just correcting" other people, then I will correct you.
You're talking as if those patents are about some great innovations. But that is complete BS. Those patents are about generic totally obvious things, like "method to update the address book". And I'm not kidding with that, "method to update the address book" is one of the patents in the Microsoft vs. Motorola dispute.
Yeah, updating the address book is serious, serious innovation and Google is totally being the big bad non-innovator by daring to create an OS where you can update the address book. I mean, how dare they!!

z33dev33l said:
The whole reason they're paying is because they themselves could not innovate. Windows phone is undoubtedly the most innovative OS on the market right now. The majority of people just either haven't tried it beyond screwing around at an ATT store for 2 minutes or because you can't customize much. The "people-centric" OS though is without a doubt the most innovative stand-alone OS.
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Click to collapse
Lol...
So if you cant innovate , u should pay royalties?
This way ford should have been more capital worthy then Exxon since they where first to build cars.
Even Einstein,built upon others idea and refined it.
God ppl need to be more broad minded.
Op just asked why is Microsoft seeking money from an OS which is not even related to them, and you throw random bull of your innovative crap
Sent from my HTC Desire HD using XDA App

jags_the1 said:
Lol...
So if you cant innovate , u should pay royalties?
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Click to collapse
Actually yes. If I can't make a hamburger - I pay McD to do it. If I can't sow some jeans - I go and pay CK to do it. If I can't make an OS by myself - you guessed it - I pay someone else who did it.
Property is property. Period.

Exactly. But now with Samsung and HTC paying royalties to MS based off Android, it would seem like this is the case going forward. That's pretty much every major OEM accounted for(except LG since Moto is now Google's). Having custom hardware and UI's did nothing to prevent the courts from agreeing to licensing fees. Android is not free in absolute terms anymore

krale said:
Actually yes. If I can't make a hamburger - I pay McD to do it.
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But even if not you personally, a lot of people *will* make hamburgers. And will McD go collecting royalties from them? Of course not, that'd be beyond ridiculous.
krale said:
Property is property. Period.
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Click to collapse
Exactly. Property is property. But then there's also this other thing called "intellectual property". I personally cringe at that, because it's a total misnomer, but oh well.

krale said:
Exactly.
Its amazing how people think there must be a global conspiracy or something against Android. Its illegal activities that are costing the OS dearly.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Krale, just click on his name and look at his previous posts before you get into a conversation that you know nothing about...lol. His posts are all the same. He sees a post about android and goes in and bashes it. Well, I am done with this thread seeing how you people have given him what he wanted...arguments and controversy.

Its legal extortion. Tell me why M$ isn't going after "GOOGLE "?
Its the same tactics they use to force OEMs to license Windows for PCs.
M$ sucks at innovation and sales especially in the consumer sector.

I believe the reason they can't go after google is because they don't charge money for android. the manufacturers though, charge US through the sales of phones.
google gives android for free
samsung, htc, etc sells us android phones
Microsoft can say these manufacturers are taking my ideas and selling it and can't say the same thing to google

**** . And the arguement ensues......
Forever living in my Galaxy Ace using XDA App

..........
Sent from my DROID3 using XDA App

lowandbehold said:
Krale, just click on his name and look at his previous posts before you get into a conversation that you know nothing about...lol. His posts are all the same. He sees a post about android and goes in and bashes it. Well, I am done with this thread seeing how you people have given him what he wanted...arguments and controversy.
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Click to collapse
no, I see a thread where Microsoft is made to look like the bad guy for not letting themselves be walked all over and I defend them. It's not a matter of fanboyism or what OS I favor. It's just what's right.

Is there anything illegal about custom ROMs?

People are constantly modifying stock ROMs, taking drivers from leaked builds, putting apps in their ROMs, ect... And it makes me wonder, is any of this technically illegal? Maybe not "directly" illegal, I'm thinking "indirectly" illegal. For example, the way installing OS X on a hackintosh is illegal cuz you violate some of Apple's rules or whatever. Get what I mean? Are we breaking the rules and violating a ton of companies' work?
Is there anything wrong with all the ROMing and rooting that goes on with Android?
Edit: Oops, this thread is probably in the wrong place. Sorry. It might belong in "General" or something

Well,I think that flashing roms by itself isn't illegal,as Android is open-source.Messing with locked bootloaders could be considered illegal,and as punishment we are deprived of our warranties.I also think that porting close-source stuff(UIs etc like Sense) that are the property of companies is also illegal,but they do have a way to protect that stuff well enough...

tolis626 said:
Well,I think that flashing roms by itself isn't illegal,as Android is open-source.Messing with locked bootloaders could be considered illegal,and as punishment we are deprived of our warranties.I also think that porting close-source stuff(UIs etc like Sense) that are the property of companies is also illegal,but they do have a way to protect that stuff well enough...
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Click to collapse
Hmm. That sucks. Basically every ROM out there is probably using something illegally taken out of some stock or leaked ROM or whatever. Doesn't it seem that way?

Yumunum said:
Hmm. That sucks. Basically every ROM out there is probably using something illegally taken out of some stock or leaked ROM or whatever. Doesn't it seem that way?
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Click to collapse
No, not really. I think that the whole android system is based on open source (AOSP), including "stock" roms.
There are tons of roms developed directly from google's aosp source, taking nothing illegally- on the opposite- contributing to the project...
You can google or look in wikipedia for more info about android open source project.
Why, do you see any problem?
Sent from my HTC Glacier using Tapatalk

Im calling the Police!!!! Your Going Down Town to Google Jail!

mattfox27 said:
Im calling the Police!!!! Your Going Down Town to Google Jail!
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Lol, my concern isn't anything like that. I'm not afraid of getting "caught" or whatever. It's morals. And that's a whole different discussion, I'm not going to get into it ;P

Stuff that is used in custom roms that comes from paid work is ILLEGAL in any way.
Drivers as sample:
- a lot of guys working in company's where the code is done by paid work - used in custom roms is illegal because the small letters from the law
- how to get these cooks by the law. It is hard but the evidence is sampled every day, believe me.
- every cook who is using leaked or stock stuff without the permission from the owner is illegal. Oh s**t XDA has to close a lot of threads very fast, because it is illegal .
Sense is the next sample:
ok HTC is doing nothing at the moment, because they have a profit on that. But in nature it is illegal in any way
Also the Samsung leaked stuff:
Samsung has a lot of profit in that way, but wait for the day when they are bigger or equal as Apple, they will go against that.
Apple:
is the best sample. Ok Apple's politics is s**t in my eyes, but they have the right on his site. Every jail break as sample is illegal in any way.
At the end, i had asked my lawyer about all this leaked and stock stuff, modding and cookking (not a local small one, a big player in our world company). He shows me some facts and normally we all use illegal stuff in the eys of the law. And a normaly good froum, so as XDA, can't change anything on that.

mike2nl said:
Stuff that is used in custom roms that comes from paid work is ILLEGAL in any way.
Apple:
is the best sample. Ok Apple's politics is s**t in my eyes, but they have the right on his site. Every jail break as sample is illegal in any way.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
not in usa jailbreaking is legal,downloading paid apps for free,that's another story

Illegal or not once you buy the phone its up to you how you use it
Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda premium

If you buy a phone, it is now yours and you can do everything with it.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-T989 using xda app-developers app

Jay794 said:
Illegal or not once you buy the phone its up to you how you use it
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Click to collapse
Dennisalex said:
If you buy a phone, it is now yours and you can do everything with it.
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Click to collapse
When you buy a phone then you are right, but what is with the millions of people who has a contract with her provider and a locked phone, or a phone gift or a phone with the quarter of the price....
Then it is illegal, because you don't are the owner of that phone. You have to pay for it with the contract. At the end of that contract the phone is yours not earlier.
The same thing is when you buy a second hand phone with all this stuff, it is illegal and you have to format it (in simple word *lol).
@xxmarkosxx:
that was new for me that amercia has given it free and that by the power of Apple. I will ask the american lawyer of our company and will come back for that. In two weeks i am there and then i will ask.

The most active illegal activity in custom roms is people porting closed-source vendor apparently like Sony Walkman or HTC Keyboard to other brands. Any kind of reverse engineering on these closed source files is a breach of license.
Sent from Xperia Play (R800a) with Tapatalk

Sorry to say, not all the time. Because i know what i have written and what is payed and what not. But in some cases you are right Dan.
In some images i have added special code to see back my work. So some things can be illegal

mike2nl said:
Sorry to say, not all the time. Because i know what i have written and what is payed and what not. But in some cases you are right Dan.
In some images i have added special code to see back my work. So some things can be illegal
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There's no such thing as owning software unless you created it yourself from scratch. Even if it's free/free (libre, as in free beer) open source, you don't own the software. You still have to follow the laws of the license. And even if you did create the software yourself, you are still bound my the license agreement of whatever IDE('s)/SDK('s) you used to write it. (E.g. it is illegal to sell software, or use software in a commercial environment, if it was created in Microsoft Visual Studio Express).
This goes the same for apps that are not open source, e.g. Xperia S Launcher or HTC Keyboard, and many apps on the Play Store. When you bought the app/device, you do not own the software, but you are legally permitted to use the software as defined in the license agreement. 95% of closed-source license agreements deny the permission to reverse engineer these files, so as soon as you use APKTool on an APK that is not open-source, you've breached copyright law.
With that said, most OEM's don't seem to care too much about XDA and various other website developments about porting proprietary vendor packages to other devices. They just don't have time or resources to chase these people down and try to sue them (I mean, they're not Apple heh) - it'd cost more money than they'd feasibly get. OTOH, some developers, such as Xiaomi (MIUI ROM creators from China), actually congratulate and share public releases of their closed-source packages being ported to non-MIUI devices and ROM's.
If you do your research, there is no argument to stand against it being illegal - it's a fact. But that's not to say it's wrong, and not to say the OEM's are too bothered about it. After all, they get a bit of publicity about it (some time ago, I switched from a HTC to a Sony device because I was much more impressed with Xperia's UI and stock apps which I used on a hacked HTC device).
Regarding bootloader/unlocking/rooting, not all manufacturers demonize it. Sony provide an official means to do it - as long as the provider has not blocked bootloader unlocking (which then requires specialized service - as said, this is usually in the case of a plan because you don't actually own the phone yet).
With that said, I will answer the original question -
It is not illegal to install a custom ROM on your phone if you own the phone. However, there are two points to consider - firstly, do you actually own the phone or does your carrier? Secondly, if it includes Google Apps, it is illegal. CyanogenMod project had to remove Google Apps from their ROM's some time ago because of a license breach (the OEM's have to pay Google to release a phone with Google Apps preinstalled).
So the only 100% legal ROM is Cyanogenmod without Google Apps, or your own AOSP compilation without Google Apps. So obviously, Google and the OEM's don't care too much about custom ROM's - because techically, 90% of them have actually broken the law somewhere. It's just not worth their time to enforce these laws, especially since these devices we buy usually have Google Apps pre-loaded already (so it's a legal grey area really, they can't prove anything in the end).

Short info..i don't write any software for XDA. I am from a company who pays for work.