> The problem came to fore when Acer got threatened with being cut off early access etc. when they wanted to launch other phones with Alibaba OS (Aliyun) on them. It's sort of a Android fork, but that's legal, but still Acer had to fold under the pressure or force getting cut off from their mobile business. Early access is much more important to OEMs than you make it seem to be and being able to fork is the core tenet of open source.
At first glance it looked like Google was going mental about Acer and Alibaba forking Android, but later on it became clear that their Aliyun OS was to be released with all the Google Apps preinstalled, which of course is not allowed. Hence all the drama at Google. Combine that with the fact that Alibaba is a big company in Asia, which gives Google reasons enough to step up.
> You know what, barely anyone would use CM if they couldn't get access to the Play Store and Google Apps like Map. So they download it illegally from other sources. CM used to provide them but got a warning from Google. So right now they wink-wink-nudge-nudge towards the Play Store.
Same issue here. Not allowed to come with Google Apps preinstalled. But unlike Aliyun, CM is not a competitor in the smartphone OS market. It just provides an alternative to the standard installed Android OS with custom manufacturer skin (Sense, TW, ...) and often bloated apps. Although Google forbids CM to come prepackaged with Gapps, I highly doubt Google would ever go on a crusade against CM for providing links to the Gapps packages floating freely on the net. After all, with a few exceptions, only people owning a genuine Android phone would ever flash CM. Having the ability to still flash Gapps would continue to extend their value as a customer to Google due to ad and Play Store revenue.
It's just Google enforcing their policy concerning the Play Store and Google Apps in the entire Open Source story that is Android. It's actually Google that's wink-wink-nudge-nudge-ing the entire custom rom developer scene. Plenty of ways for Google to DRM their apps to prevent the likes of CM from using them, but they won't.
At first glance it looked like Google was going mental about Acer and Alibaba forking Android, but later on it became clear that their Aliyun OS was to be released with all the Google Apps preinstalled, which of course is not allowed. Hence all the drama at Google. Combine that with the fact that Alibaba is a big company in Asia, which gives Google reasons enough to step up.
> You know what, barely anyone would use CM if they couldn't get access to the Play Store and Google Apps like Map. So they download it illegally from other sources. CM used to provide them but got a warning from Google. So right now they wink-wink-nudge-nudge towards the Play Store.
Same issue here. Not allowed to come with Google Apps preinstalled. But unlike Aliyun, CM is not a competitor in the smartphone OS market. It just provides an alternative to the standard installed Android OS with custom manufacturer skin (Sense, TW, ...) and often bloated apps. Although Google forbids CM to come prepackaged with Gapps, I highly doubt Google would ever go on a crusade against CM for providing links to the Gapps packages floating freely on the net. After all, with a few exceptions, only people owning a genuine Android phone would ever flash CM. Having the ability to still flash Gapps would continue to extend their value as a customer to Google due to ad and Play Store revenue.
It's just Google enforcing their policy concerning the Play Store and Google Apps in the entire Open Source story that is Android. It's actually Google that's wink-wink-nudge-nudge-ing the entire custom rom developer scene. Plenty of ways for Google to DRM their apps to prevent the likes of CM from using them, but they won't.