Posted on Tuesday, Sep 27, 2011
A couple of weeks ago I noted the conversation in the FOSS community over Google’s closed development of the “open” Android mobile operating system. That debate was sparked by the publication of some internal Google documents that instructed its Android team: “Do not develop in the open.”
Posted on Thursday, Aug 11, 2011
In my previous post, I explained how Section 4 of GPLv2 plays a critical role in GPL enforcement actions brought by the SFC and the SFLC. By immediately terminating rights for non-compliance and requiring express permission from the licensor to reestablish those rights, Section 4 provides a stout club that can be used against companies who rely on GPL code in their products but fail to adhere to the complicated requirements for that license. In this post, I want to examine what that might mean for an Android ecosystem that is not a model of GPL compliance.
Posted on Monday, Aug 8, 2011
Not long ago, open source advocates sued more than a dozen major consumer electronics manufacturers, claiming that the manufacturers had lost the right to use GPL’d software in their devices. It looks like the same could be said of Android: virtually every one is unlicensed.
