Google Collapse - Google Company Has Use You To Make Money Using Your Brain In Order To Create Android. But Now Android Is No Longer Free Software - They Will Be Bankrupt Within Months And The Rise Of Open Source Revolution Is Defeating Every Closed Source Monopoly Corporation

 "The new terms for the Android SDK now include phrases such as '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' among other non-Free-software-friendly terms, as noted by FSF Europe's Torsten Grote. Replicant, a free fork of Android, announced the release of Replicant SDK 4.0 based on the latest sources of the Android SDK without the new terms."

Source: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/01/04/1339206/the-android-sdk-is-no-longer-free-software

It impacts people who care about principle the software they use is based upon.

Freedom is not (just) a matter of principle. The reason that people take your freedom away from you is because they want, later at their option, to be able to take other things from you that would naturally be yours. Microsoft locks people into proprietary licenses because they know that, after a few years of using the OS they buy from them you will need a new computer and a new system, either because your old one broke or because an associate wants to do the same things as you do already. Normally, if you were allowed your natural right to copy things you own, you would just be able to copy the old one and that would work fine. By taking away that freedom, Microsoft is able to take away your money from you again later for nothing more than you could easily have done yourself if they didn't interfere with your copying.

Google's aim here is to make life difficult for competitors such as Amazon and the Chinese Android clone makers (not that these will care). This allows them to interfere with the free market for their own benefit. For programmers reading Slashdot, that means that, instead of being four or more potential developers of mobile software you can work for, Amazon, Google, Apple and the Chinese, there may well only be two: Apple and Google. With the possible exception of Jolla and Ubuntu, there is almost nobody else in the market who could consider competing. For people buying mobile phones would mean that, instead of having widespread choice from different vendors, everything would go through Google or Apple.

This is one of the key reasons why licenses such as the AGPLv3 as well as free software foundations which can provide a neutral holder for coyprights are so important. Look at how FreeBSD development has been absorbed by Apple even though it was supposedly "Open Source". Without strong copyleft licenses the only choice will be which set of chains you wear. Once you are wearing those chains the only choice will be to give the mobile vendors what they want to take.

This work on Replicant is crucial and hopefully companies like Amazon which could gain from it will understand that and come out and support the project. Anyone who can contribute Android code should be working for the goals of Replicant wherever possible. Also you want to make sure that your code goes in to a neutral party under the AGPLv3 to make sure that you yourself will be able to get the benefit from it later.
BTW, isn't it funny the way all the "don't be evil" trolls suddenly shut up when we have an actual example of Google doing something not nice?

Source: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3358333&cid=42475027

Android SDK is now proprietary, Replicant to the rescue

By torsten.grote, on January 3rd, 2013

I just noticed that the Android SDK is now non-free software. If you go to

https://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html#download

and click on one of the files, you are presented with lengthy “Terms and Conditions” which for example say:

In order to use the SDK, you must first agree to this License Agreement. You may not use the SDK if you do not accept this License Agreement.

This sentence alone already violates freedom 0, the freedom to use the program for any purpose without restrictions.
Today, the truly Free Software version of Android called Replicant came to the rescue and released a free (as in free speech) version of the SDK.
Apparently, Google made this step to prevent fragmentation of the ecosystem. What are they going to do next? This situation is far from perfect for software freedom. Developing Android Apps in freedom is only possible as soon as the Replicant developers catch up. Looks like Android stops being a Free Software friendly platform.
So let’s all help that this trend is stopped and Android remains Free. Signing up on the android discussion list is a good first step to asses the situation and plan further action.
Update: It has been pointed out by some people that the SDK Terms and Conditions are older than previously assumed. Google only requires explicit agreement now and shows the terms before download. That wasn’t the case earlier.
Update2: Replicant developer Paul Kocialkowski wrote a blog post as well and explained in more detail what the problem with the SDK is.

Source: https://blogs.fsfe.org/torsten.grote/2013/01/03/android-sdk-is-now-proprietary-replicant-to-the-rescue/

It was brought to our attention that the Android SDK is now being released under an overall proprietary software license. In the past, we already had to release a free software SDK, back in Replicant 2.2 times, because the Android SDK was shipping with the non-free Google APIs. More recent SDK updates made these APIs only plug-ins that weren’t shipped with the SDK and it was made clear that these components were non-free while all the license files we could find on the Android SDK package were free software licenses.

However now Google decided to put an overall non-free license for the SDK, which brings back the need of having a fully free Replicant SDK. Since our only SDK release is getting old (it was API level 8), we built an SDK package from Replicant 4.0 sources, that is API level 15.

You can download the SDK from the ReplicantSDK page, find an installation and usage guide as well as the build instructions on the wiki.

Source: http://replicant.us/2013/01/replicant-4-0-sdk-release/