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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, September 11 2012 @ 02:28 PM EDT |
Android is not "completely free". Most of it isn't released
under
GPL compatible licenses and the term "Android" is a
google owned trademark.
The
only parts of the OS that are
"free" in the financial sense are the core
operating system
components and network/telephony stacks. The rest has to
be
either licensed from Google or developed in house.
Most of what
I'm looking at is under the Apache licence. No, that's not GLP, but it is open
source.
What are you looking at that needs to be licensed from Google? Or
do you "has to be either licensed from Google" as in accept the Apache licence? [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, September 11 2012 @ 02:45 PM EDT |
The non free parts are the Google apps and APIs. Hardware
drivers depend on the manufacturers' policies.
If you want, you can build it from source (the android open
source project- AOSP) and use it, which is what cyanogenmod
team does (with a few relatively small customisations)
The GPL is not the only valid definition of free. Without
wishing to get into a software holy war with Stallman, many
people find the Apache licence free enough for their
purposes, which is what the majority of the user space code
is released under, and does not require any payment or
specific licensing from Google.
http://source.android.com/source/licenses.html
As further evidence, look at what Amazon did with the
kindle. Minor UI changes, a new launcher (the default
android launcher is also Apache licensed incidentally), and
a few custom apps, and boom - their own branded OS. Amazon
are not paying anything for using android, and certainly
never negotiated a license.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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