I'm interested to see if this really plays out this way. They had for sure some lawyers looking over this issue beforehand. In my opinion they made a new launcher which skinned the whole operating system (just like other phone manufacturers do) and closed sourced that part. I can't see anything wrong with that.

Will stay on top of this topic.

#android #opensource #kindle

Reshared post from +Henrý Þór Baldursson

Hey Amazon. Will we have to sue you to get access to the source for Amazon's Kindle Fire operating system that you stole based off Android? If you don't provide source for GPL code that you use and have modified for your tablet, then you'll lose the copyleft permissions granted to you by the license. Hence, you'll be unable to release software based on Linux and the other GPL'd bits of software in Android.

http://kdk.amazon.com has a form to request "beta developer" approval, that I've applied for. If anyone gets denied that access, and there's no other way to get the SDK and the source for the GPL'd licensed software, then I certainly hope the FSF sues Amazon's asses off.

GPL doesn't just mean "Ooh, free stuff I can appropriate into my own product and sell for gobs of money", that's the BSD License. GPL means you can redistribute and modify software, as long as you provide the sourcecode with any modifications.

Failure to do that results in loss of privileges to the original source. If that happens, then have fun trying to keep your Kindle Fire ecosystem alive.

Embedded Link

Kindle Development Kit for Active Content Build innovative active content for Kindle, Amazon's wireless reading device. The Kindle Development Kit (KDK) provides rich APIs, tools, and documentation to help you create active content for E ...

Google+: View post on Google+