Late last week word hit the Android community that the developer of the Cyanogen Android ROM
received a cease-and-desist from everyone's favorite "do no evil" company, Google. Many reacted negatively to Google asking a developer to not modify what is purported to be an open-source operating system, but the issue was not with the OS; rather it was with the apps that ship on it, things like Google Maps and Gmail -- things that are most definitely
not open source -- which Google does not want distributed on modified flavors of Android. The solution, according to the dev, is to simply remove them from the ROM, but to provide a way for users to install them back on their devices. The dev will be working on an app that will enable users to back up those applications and then, after the ROM has been installed, to restore them like new. It certainly sounds like a tidy way around Google's restrictions, albeit one that is going to take a considerable amount of time to implement, the net result of which will be exactly like before. That leaves us wondering: was this really worth the bad PR for the Googs?
posted Sep 29th 2009 7:01AM
At least we'll still have a choice...
now I can get that xperia x3 when available, which BTW has been unboxed already:
http://www.unwiredview.com/2009/09/21/sony-ericsson-xperia-x3-rachael-already-unboxed/
WAKEUP ENGADGET! :P
That has been my question all along... Was all this negative press worth it for Google? What did they achieve? I already own those Google apps, via the 2 MT3Gs I have... Cyanogen was not in any way distributing those apps to people who didnt have them already... Not like some guy with a WinMo phone all of a sudden said, oh boy! Im going to run Cyanogen's Android ROM...LOL
And another thing... If Google would have made Android run as sweet as Cyanogen did, we wouldn't need Cyanogen in the first place... Google has no one to blame but themselves for making the OS soooo sloooooow... Opening the door for devs to optimize it and make it run like it should.
It's worth the income from licencors like HTC that want to release "Google Experience" devices. If they don't enforce the licence terms on hobbyists, then the corporations can turn around and ignore them too.