Android SDK is now proprietary

Hold on a minute.<p>While the Android SDK terms have changed over the years (most notably with the recent "anti-fragmentation" clause), that's not what the post is talking about. Instead, the post is identifying the Android SDK as non-free because you have to agree to Google's Terms and Conditions in order to use it at all. That's absolutely correct, however...<p>As someone who downloaded the original SDK in 2007, I can tell you that this was true from the beginning. Sadly the Wayback Machine is having trouble retrieving their first crawl of the terms (February 2009), but here's a crawl from January 2010 that shows that the offending clause has been there for at least 3 years: <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20100111025451/http://developer.android.com/intl/ja/sdk/terms.html" rel="nofollow">http://web.archive.org/web/20100111025451/http://developer.a...</a><p>A more accurate title would be: Google's Android SDK has always been proprietary, but I only just noticed.<p>Edit: Based on the date at the bottom of the wayback page, the linked version of the agreement dates back to April 2009.

At first I thought this is hyperbole, but there's an anti-forking clause in the license agreement:<p>&#62; "3.4 You agree that you will not take any actions that may cause or result in the fragmentation of Android, including but not limited to distributing, participating in the creation of, or promoting in any way a software development kit derived from the SDK."<p>IANAL, but this seems to be designed to prevent projects like the Kindle Fire from building their own ecosystem on Google's code. Good for Google I guess, but no longer in the spirit of open source.

Android SDK != Android. Not saying whether this move by Google is good or bad, just pointing out an important difference. You can still fork the Android source code to your heart's content, you just have to write your own toolchain for building and developing with it.

Another interesting step in this direction is that Google stopped listing third party SDK add-ons in the Android SDK manager. They have to be added manually as a URL now, which means far, far fewer developers will ever use a third party SDK add-on.<p>It's sad, but I think it really hurt Google that they pushed tablets so hard and so long and pretty much failed at that market where amazon kicked ass. So business reasons seem to have forced them to kill Android as open and free. Reminds me a lot of this recent post about all the platforms closing up to try to squeeze more money out of mobile as web revenues dry up: <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/29/unnatural-acts-and-the-rise-of-mobile/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/29/unnatural-acts-and-the-rise...</a><p>Google's bread and butter has always been web ads, and it is losing that with the mobile revolution. Now amazon came along and customized Android, and took a large share of the mobile money that Google was expecting. I do really hate the new Google Play. It is constantly showing books and movies and music in my face when I want apps and app search results directly. You can tell they are being pressured to deliver revenue at the cost of user experiences and pushed out a poor man's clone of amazon business model.

Very amusing. Didn't Google just fight, and win, a court case with Oracle about forking Java into the Android SDK?<p>So it's not OK for Oracle to prevent Java fragmentation, but it is OK for Google to prevent Android fragmentation.<p>Apparently "don't be evil" is more nuanced then I thought.

I wonder if that's why we're seeing stories like this? <a href="http://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/2013/01/03/samsung-confirms-plan-to-begin-inching-away-from-android/" rel="nofollow">http://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/2013/01/03/samsung-con...</a><p>Samsung has amassed quite a history, in a very short amount of time, of heavily customizing Android for their devices. That might at least partially explain why they seem willing to gamble on their own in-house OS rather than continue with Android.

From the terms and conditions:<p>3.3 You may not use the SDK for any purpose not expressly permitted by this License Agreement. Except to the extent required by applicable third party licenses, you may not: (a) copy (except for backup purposes), modify, adapt, redistribute, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, or create derivative works of the SDK or any part of the SDK; or (b) load any part of the SDK onto a mobile handset or any other hardware device except a personal computer, combine any part of the SDK with other software, or distribute any software or device incorporating a part of the SDK.<p>3.4 You agree that you will not take any actions that may cause or result in the fragmentation of Android, including but not limited to distributing, participating in the creation of, or promoting in any way a software development kit derived from the SDK.<p>3.5 Use, reproduction and distribution of components of the SDK licensed under an open source software license are governed solely by the terms of that open source software license and not this License Agreement.

Sorry to sound like a troll. But I am always confused by this movement on free software. Make no mistake: I totally respect choices of certain individuals whom contribute to free software like Linux, they have made the software a better place, just like those philanthropists out there whom make the world a little bit less cruel. However for those who decide not to, I don't see the reason to demand for anything, even in this case Google which may have changed its decisions. All effort will need money, and I really don't see there is free lunch in this world. Am I missing anything?

" 3.3 You may not use the SDK for any purpose not expressly permitted by this License Agreement. Except to the extent required by applicable third party licenses, you may not: (a) copy (except for backup purposes), modify, adapt, redistribute, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, or create derivative works of the SDK or any part of the SDK;"<p>The part about not being allowed to reverse engineer seems to be the part of the license, which is most against free software principles. So IANAL, but actually understanding what a software does is, IMHO, the core of FOSS.

As far as I can tell, Android has always been proprietary except for the parts they were required to release under the GPL (like the kernel). Their GUI libraries were closed source (at least when I was tinkering with Android), and clauses like this have been in their terms for a long time. Sure, they look more open than Apple, but Android is a long way from being as open as the desktop Linux distros and BSD systems.

At least I'm having problems accessing the site. Page from Google Cache: <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LPBhLpmlOa8J:blogs.fsfe.org/torsten.grote/2013/01/03/android-sdk-is-now-proprietary-replicant-to-the-rescue/&#38;hl=en&#38;tbo=d&#38;gl=fi&#38;strip=1" rel="nofollow">http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LPBhLpm...</a>

so if you build something based on Android and want to expose some functionality to that system but customize it, you can't do it on top of the Android SDK?

&#62;ActivityManager.isUserAMonkey() &#62;&#62;Log.WTF()

Oh boy, I can't wait to see how this would be purposefully re-written and bastardized by TechCrunch (or by MG Seigler himself) saying how iOS is much better in the end, because both of some random reason.

All the more reason to back Ubuntu on phones.

What does this mean for Cordova/PhoneGap?

Google's blogpost about vendor compatability: <a href="http://officialandroid.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-benefits-importance-of-compatibility.html" rel="nofollow">http://officialandroid.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-benefits-imp...</a>

What bullshit. Does requiring users to agree to GPL or LGPL license make a software non-free?