Irate Android devs aim to replace Google’s proprietary bits



Google has angered the Android enthusiast community by sending a cease and desist notice to a third-party developer who is building a popular custom version of the open source platform. Google doesn’t want its proprietary bits included in cooked ROMs.

…Google is facing a major backlash from the Android community after sending a cease-and-desist order to the independent developer behind a popular Android mod. The controversy reflects some of the licensing challenges that are raised by mobile platforms that incorporate both open and proprietary components. It also illuminates yet another weak point in Google’s commitment to delivering a truly inclusive and open platform.

Developer Steve Kondik, known by his handle Cyanogen, is an independent Android hacker who builds custom ROM images that users can install on their Android-powered handsets. His customizations are well-liked and bring significant improvements to the platform. A growing number of Android enthusiasts contend that the stock platform doesn’t live up to expectations and that the custom ROM, particularly its performance optimizations, are essential to having a quality Android user experience. The problem, however, is that the custom ROM ships with Google’s proprietary software components, such as…

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Irate Android devs aim to replace Google’s proprietary bits

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This entry was posted on Saturday, January 30th, 2010 at 7:36 am and is filed under News. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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