Everyone’s favorite Android hacker appears to have angered someone at Google. We just received word that Cyanogen has received a cease and desist letter from Google. Details are scarce, but it appears Google is not happy about Cyanogen distributing their closed source Android apps (Market, Talk, Gmail, YouTube, etc). CyanogenMod is easily the most popular custom Android rom with over 30,000 active users.

Relevant bits from the chat log we received:

[20:03] <cyanogen> google just cease and desisted me
[20:15] <cyanogen> cyanogenmod is probably going to be dead
[20:16] <cyanogen> i’m opening a dialogue with them
[20:20] <cyanogen> no they are talking specifically about the closed-source google apps
[20:20] <cyanogen> and how i am not licensed to distribute them
[20:20] <cyanogen> my argument is that i only develop for google-experience devices which are already licensed for these apps
[20:20] <cyanogen> so we’ll see what they say
[20:20] <cyanogen> maybe we can work something out
[20:24] <cyanogen> maps, market, talk, gmail, youtube

Hopefully, the two parties will be able to work something out. I’ve been using CyanogenMod on both my Android phones for several months and they are awesome. If you want to show your support for Cyanogen, you can always visit his site and place a donation (His site is down at the moment) for all the countless hours he has put into improving the Android platform.

[End androidandme.com content]

Google you better watch it, you might just piss off the wrong group of people you have been trying to so feverishly accumulate. Do be like Apple, and have to control everything. Android is open source.
And if I want to use other firmware in my phone then dammit im gonna with or without your or T-Mobile’s ok.

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