Brad Kuhn has an interesting take on modifying large codebases: "If someone actually does all the research to prove that Google did, I'd easily offer a 1,000-to-1 bet to anyone that such a copyright infringement could be cleared up easily [...]"<p>I've been in the software industry for more than two decades, and I've worked with such companies as Blizzard Entertainment (I actually edited a small part of the C source code of Warcraft II - Tides of Darkness, for an example). I know and I'm sure pretty much every reader here knows that it's <i>never</i> just a quick and simple thing to change something in such a large and interwoven codebase as Android.<p>Any change can result in unforeseeable run-time issues even in parts of the codebase where it seems counterintuitive.<p>I don't deny that it's doable -- in my own blog post on this I advocate replacing Bionic with glibc. I don't claim it will take five years. But the idea that this can be done in no time and without any risk of incompatibilities and other issues flies in the face of everything any technical decision-maker at any significant software company would say.<p>It may work in a "release early, release often" world. I doubt that the likes of Samsung and Motorola plan to "release early, release often" their Android-based devices.<p>Such an absurd downplaying of the issue calls into question that Brad Kuhn seriously wants a solution. It seems he just wants to be an apologist.