Matt Giuca writes:

I'm under the understanding that if you don't use the official Android, then you can't use the Android Market (or "Google Play" now). Is this correct?

I don't know. I've never used that, I use only the F-Droid repository URL:http://f-droid.org/ which provides all the apps I've installed, and they're all free software. Perhaps other stores are able to be used also, but the Android Market likely has artificial restrictions on who can connect. -- \ “In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong | `\ with the majority than to be right alone.” —John Kenneth | _o__) Galbraith, 1989-07-28 | Ben Finney

Matt Giuca writes:

After living in free software world for so long, it does feel very ... I don't know ... "icky" being in the Android Market where all the free apps are either displaying ads, trying to sell you in-app purchases, or trying to upsell you to buy the full version. Oh, and asking for access to your location and contact list.

Easy response: since they're free, get the source code and disable any anti-features like that. Then use your freedom to redistribute them to anyone else, so they benefit from your improvements. Unless you mean apps that are *not* free, and are merely zero-cost proprietary software? -- \ “How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have | `\ some hope of making progress.” —Niels Bohr | _o__) | Ben Finney

On Tue, 27 Mar 2012, Matt Giuca wrote:

I'm under the understanding that if you don't use the official Android, then you can't use the Android Market (or "Google Play" now). Is this correct?

Google has a set of binary-only proprietary apps for Android which can only be installed by a hardware vendor who satisfies some Google conditions. I'm not really interested in what those conditions are apart from the fact that obeying the GPL is absolutely not one of them. The applications which come from Google are the App market (which can be replaced by the "Google Play" market on Android 2.2 and above - including CyanogenMod), the Gmail client, and Google Maps. Osmand provides functionality which is in many ways equal to Google Maps, apart from the fact that Osmand has no satellite maps and no good search interface. On the up-side downloading vector maps for all of Australia is less than 200MB of Zip file and thus you can use Osmand without net access (I plan to use it next time I'm on a cruise ship). This is one significant Osmand feature that Google Maps will never have, Google Maps allows you to cache 10 miles square regions. The Gmail client is an annoyance, it keeps on getting run when you least want it to. I now use Fetchmail to suck mail from my Gmail account and put it in an IMAP folder on my own mail server just to shut up Gmail on my phones. The Google App market (now Google Play) is really handy for a set of free as in beer apps. Annoyingly it now features a book market which has absolutely no free books!

I've also been told that if you have an existing legitimate Android device, then you *can* install Google Play into Cyanogen or another unofficial Android distro. Is this correct?

If yes, then how difficult is it to get normal (Market) Android apps working in Cyanogen?

When you install CyanogenMod you are permitted to use the same binaries that you had on your phone with the stock Android distro. But in practice most people who run the Google App market on CyanogenMod probably just download an archive of Google Apps from someone else - it's one of those things which is illegal because the copyright laws are insane. Also it is possible to use various backup programs to take a package file from an Android system and copy it to another. So if you have an Android phone running the Google Play market then you can use it to install an application, then do a backup/restore process to get the app running on an Android system without the Google Play market installed. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

On Tue, 27 Mar 2012, Brian May wrote:

The argument is that this is the only way Google has to ensure that Android phones meet a minimum standard, and we don't have a maze of different products that are incompatible with each other.

Where the minimum standard is so low that the status LED is removed from some popular phones such as the Galaxy S to save a cent or two.

As much as I don't like this, they might have a point. Even with the current restrictions, manufacturers still are making lots of changes to Android for the sake of making their product different, when customers don't necessarily want this. These changes typically mean it takes longer to get updates, and exposes the manufacturers to legal challenges due to issues that aren't always present in the base Android code. This in turn gives Android competitors an advantage.

Customers usually don't get updates because the vendor locks the phone down deliberately to prevent it. My Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 is locked to Android 2.1 and I haven't been able to root it to install CyanogenMod. Sony has recently deigned to release an update to a newer version of Android however they have not deigned to support their proprietary backup program that they shipped with the Xperia and the new version of Android wipes ALL data on the phone. Fortunately Sony was generous enough to warn me that it is impossible to backup my important data, but as Sony doesn't allow me to backup application data and the application vendors sometimes don't allow it I'm stuck on Android 2.1 (with whatever security holes there may be) until I can root that phone. If Google really wanted to allow us to have updates they could easily make it a condition of shipping the Google binaries on Android that the phone vendor must provide updates for at least 2 years and/or allow CyanogenMod etc to be installed. The sad thing is that the Xperia X10 is actually quite nice hardware apart from the battery life. If it was running a newer version of Android (with Wifi AP support and better power efficiency) then it would really be a great phone and compare very well with phones that are much newer. An Xperia X10 running CM7 would beat the hell out of anything you can get on a $29 plan in Australia! -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

On Tuesday 27 March 2012 19:33:12 Russell Coker wrote:

Google has a set of binary-only proprietary apps for Android which can only be installed by a hardware vendor who satisfies some Google conditions.

That appears to no longer be the case.. http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/Latest_Version#Google_Apps -- Chris Samuel : http://www.csamuel.org/ : Melbourne, VIC This email may come with a PGP signature as a file. Do not panic. For more info see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPGP

On 26 April 2012 12:58, Tim Cuthbertson wrote:

There's a note on that page that some apps can now be downloaded from the marketplace, but it's important to realise that the marketplace app itself is one such binary-only app that you can't legally get unless it came with your phone.

There _are_ links to downloads of the google apps on that wiki, but I expect it's illegal to distribute them, and maybe even to download them.

The google apps have been included with the iso distribution of android-x86 - does this mean downloading it is illegal? Supposedly android-x86 is entirely open source - see http://www.android-x86.org/ - I wonder if somebody made a mistake including this stuff in the ISO. Unfortunately, nobody responded to my forum post, maybe I should open a ticket??? -- Brian May

On 26/04/12 12:58, Tim Cuthbertson wrote:

Unless I'm missing something, that still seems to back up Matt's statement.

Er, I was replying to Russell.. -- Chris Samuel : http://www.csamuel.org/ : Melbourne, VIC

On 26 April 2012 12:58, Tim Cuthbertson wrote:

There's a note on that page that some apps can now be downloaded from the marketplace, but it's important to realise that the marketplace app itself is one such binary-only app that you can't legally get unless it came with your phone.

From those links, I found http://goo.im/gapps, which took me to here: http://wiki.rootzwiki.com/Google_Apps

"In order to update the Google Apps for devices which have not been updated to the latest versions of Android, and to simplify the GApps installation process, the Google Apps are now traditionally packaged in a separate flashable ZIP which can be easily installed on top of a ROM. This allows for faster installations, easier upgrades of Google software, less tasks for the custom recovery to perform, more user-friendly installations, and an overall more streamlined process." Unfortunately, this doesn't really answer any of the questions raised. -- Brian May

On Thu, 26 Apr 2012, Tim Cuthbertson wrote:

There are links to downloads of the google apps on that wiki, but I expect it's illegal to distribute them, and maybe even to download them.

I think that Google might be most concerned about mass distributors (which is the point of copyright) and not particularly concerned about individuals. Let's face it the number of people using CyanogenMod is too small to make any commercial difference to any aspect of mobile phones. It isn't going to have much impact on handset sales (either directly or through "free" phones offered on plans), call or data use, app purchase, or anything else. It's hard enough to find CyanogenMod users at a LUG! -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/