4 ms·

Googles Android license forbids this.

fulafel 7y ago
What part of it does it forbid? You could relicense the existing SW stack, no?
alkonaut 7y ago
Are you saying that manufacturers that produce hardware that runs android are banned from also selling hardware (being an OEM manufacturer) that does not run android (that doesn't fly with e.g. Samsung making TVs with their OS and Sony making cameras that runs non-android I guess)? Somehow it doesn't seem possible to prevent HTC from building one smartphone and sell it either themselves or via another brand as an android phone, while at the same time selling the same design (screen peripherals etc) with some minor chages, maybe a slightly different SoC, to someone who wants to sell a phone with a different OS? How exactly would the license forbid it? Obviously google owns the license and can probably unilaterally revoke it for anything they see as unpleasant (such as building OEM phones that run linux, instead of just TVs that do?) - but is this really expressed explicitly in their agreement? How?
- josefx 7y ago
  > Are you saying that manufacturers that produce hardware that runs android are banned from also selling hardware (being an OEM manufacturer) that does not run android It is the other way around companies that produce Google Android phones (with play store) are banned from producing anything Android not based on Googles stack. Amazon had to find out the hard way that basing your OS on Android makes it hard to find a manufacturer. Of course this is not globally true. Various countries already informed Google just what they thought of that kind of licensing abuse. That led to Google carving out new licensing regions for every lawsuit and outright boycotting Turkey when they mandated the same treatment as the EU.
  - alkonaut 7y ago
    So no problem for a manufacturer to build a oem phone running a non-Android Linux then? It has no relation to Android if it runs a non-Android OS? Or is there a

What part of it does it forbid? You could relicense the existing SW stack, no?

Are you saying that manufacturers that produce hardware that runs android are banned from also selling hardware (being an OEM manufacturer) that does not run android (that doesn't fly with e.g. Samsung making TVs with their OS and Sony making cameras that runs non-android I guess)? Somehow it doesn't seem possible to prevent HTC from building one smartphone and sell it either themselves or via another brand as an android phone, while at the same time selling the same design (screen peripherals etc) with some minor chages, maybe a slightly different SoC, to someone who wants to sell a phone with a different OS? How exactly would the license forbid it? Obviously google owns the license and can probably unilaterally revoke it for anything they see as unpleasant (such as building OEM phones that run linux, instead of just TVs that do?) - but is this really expressed explicitly in their agreement? How?

josefx 7y ago
> Are you saying that manufacturers that produce hardware that runs android are banned from also selling hardware (being an OEM manufacturer) that does not run android It is the other way around companies that produce Google Android phones (with play store) are banned from producing anything Android not based on Googles stack. Amazon had to find out the hard way that basing your OS on Android makes it hard to find a manufacturer. Of course this is not globally true. Various countries already informed Google just what they thought of that kind of licensing abuse. That led to Google carving out new licensing regions for every lawsuit and outright boycotting Turkey when they mandated the same treatment as the EU.
- alkonaut 7y ago
  So no problem for a manufacturer to build a oem phone running a non-Android Linux then? It has no relation to Android if it runs a non-Android OS? Or is there a