31 Mar 2010

GPL Violations by HTC - What happened to Android? It can't be both Open and Closed Source.

The following was an email sent to license-violation@gpl-violations.org in regards to the Android platform being Open Source yet HTC has "forgotten" to supply the developers within the Open Source community the required code to create their own distributions for certain devices or better yet make their "distros" usable. The intent of this email is not to remove Android's Open Source rating but to move HTC to give the developers the required information to produce the Android community with additional choices for each device. Read up on General Public Licenses (GPL) HERE

Wes Garner <wesgarner@gmail.com> Wed, Mar 31, 2010 at 6:43 PM
Cc: Chris Soyars, Simon Walker, ahmgsk mod , movikun, xillius200, Brian Crook, Coby Bryant, Ivan Maldonado, crypysmoker, Ben Buchacher, ccriffman, doublerebel, Cyanogen, TheDudesAndroid, JAguirre1231, allenkiehl
HTC / Qualcomm / Google (apart of the AOSP(Android Open Source Project) Project)
The following commercial devices that use Linux Kernel (GPL) code are using modified/new code in this kernel that prevents users from building a proper kernel to be used on these devices

Device 1: HTC Magic USA - here as codenamed and sold as T-Mobile myTouch 3G Fender or T-Mobile myTouch 3G with 3.5mm (Jan 2010 for Fender, Feb 2010 for myTouch 3G with 3.5mm)
This device uses code that has been released to the public except for one piece for major functionality of this device
Drivers for touchscreen device Elan 8232 I2C touchscreen
The code is represented in their public git source listed at http://android.git.kernel.org but this code does not operate when created using their own sources
This shows that some code change has been left out and released without following GPL and releasing this code
The problem created from this is kernels can be built for this device and work with the exception of the touchscreen (making the phone mostly inoperable)

Device 2: HTC Magic - European version with new radio software by Qualcomm
This radio software has been shipped with recent versions by Rogers and other carriers
The software update was sent out as an OTA update to HTC Magic devices over the last few months
This device radio software requires new drivers for the radio - AMSS 6355 (Radio software built by Qualcomm)
Code available on HTC, Qualcomm, and AOSP's git website hosted by kernel.org does not contain this driver implementation that is shipped with these devices
AMSS 6350 being the last released version on these public kernel source code websites

Information showing that these are the specific things not being provided by pulling the configuration used to build the kernel from the device itself, labeled as the following:
Device 1: CONFIG_TOUCHSCREEN_ELAN_I2C_8232=y
Device 2: CONFIG_MSM_AMSS_VERSION_6355=y

If you would like the documentation of the kernel configurations, I would be glad to provide
Attempts at contacting HTC (who is the main maintainer of this kernel code) with this have been made but without any response