Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 4th Jan 2013 18:29 UTC
A blog post on the Free Software Foundation Europe site is making the rounds around the web. The blog post, written by Torsten Grote, claims that 'the Android SDK is now proprietary', because upon download, you have to agree to terms and conditions which are clearly not compatible with free and/or open source software. What Grote fails to mention - one, these terms have mostly always been here, and two, they only apply to the SDK binaries. The source is still freely available.
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Member since:2011-02-11
Member since:2005-11-29
Good catch. Does this make the Android SDK any less proprietary (who cares?)
If the distinction disappears when you check out the source (which you can presumably modify however you'd like) then is it safe to call what you check out "Android"?
I think the blog post is correct in saying the Android SDK is non free (in his crazy fanatical definition of free)
Member since:2005-07-12
From the Replicant page:
Replicant provides its own SDK, built from source, since the Android SDK as released by Google is distributed under a non-free license and suggests installing non-free plug-ins such as the Google APIs.
After downloading the Replicant SDK from the ReplicantSDK page, it should work the same as the Android SDK as provided by Google except that the Replicant SDK already contains a built and ready to use emulator image.
After downloading the Replicant SDK from the ReplicantSDK page, it should work the same as the Android SDK as provided by Google except that the Replicant SDK already contains a built and ready to use emulator image.
If you had bothered to follow the link to the Replicant page, you'd see that they offer the same SDK without Google's restrictions, built from the same source. Emulator included.
But, no. It's more satisfying to remain wrong and believe you were right the entire time.
Member since:2005-11-29
The Replicant SDK is not the Android SDK. It is an offshoot SDK for an offshoot distribution to Android. The owner of the project agrees with me.
The Android SDK, which is exactly what is being criticized, contains a license agreement you need to agree upon to be able to use.
Not that I care, it's stupid to complain about agreeing to a license agreement. This is much ado about nothing.
Member since:2007-11-11
But has anybody compared it to what Google has in its SDK? Because if all they wanted was to protect its copyrights like Mozilla why wouldn't they just use something like the MPL, why go to all this extra mess and BS?
So before I'd say "oh the source is there and its the same" I'd want somebody to do a comparison, after all it wouldn't be the first time a company has given some but not all of the code.
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Member since:
2005-11-29
The source code to Android is available. Not the SDK.
The plugin, tools, and probably the emulator itself is still only usable by agreeing to the terms and conditions.