Google's attempt at open-source Android apps has been... weak... at best. (Hello, "Mail".)
Google's "Google Experience" is also silly. There is a tablet/media player coming out soon that has Android. (Archos 5) But it won't play YouTube videos because the device does not meet the "Google Experience" criteria due to not having a camera. If you want YouTube, Gmail, and Google Maps, your device has to have a camera. WTF, Google?
(Ironically, I think the iPod Touch has Google Maps but doesn't have a camera. So Google is actually encouraging users to use their competition's product instead of their own. WTF, Google?)
(That's not to say that there shouldn't be free alternatives developed.)
That said, as a user of CyanogenMod on my G1, I'd be absolutely heartbroken if his builds could no longer distribute these apps.
I still don't think they've adequately covered it. The key to me is in the penultimate paragraph, where they first say
"With a high-quality open platform in hand, we then returned to our goal of making our services available on users' phones.",
"We make some of these apps available to users of any Android-powered device via Android Market, and others are pre-installed on some phones through business deals."
Count me as another who was just about to buy an Android phone, and is now seriously reconsidering.
No one expects any app developer to open source their app just because it is sold or available in the Android Market. And app developers are welcome to get a carrier or include their app as part of a base install, which is effectively what Google has done as part of being an app developer. If the carrier pays the developer for that, or the developer pays the carrier for that, or if money doesn't change hands for that, maybe the developer just wants increased exposure and usage of their app that would come from it being in a default install, that's between those two parties.
EDIT to add:
It's unfortunate that Google is saying that they license their apps to distributors. What would it take for ROM creators to become licencors? Alternatively, since Google presumably has an interest in people actually using their apps, that they don't provide a way for users who are using a properly licensed phone/ROM who are using those apps to be installed other than through the base install seems kind of shortsighted. Some of their apps are available in the market (like the Finance, My Maps Editor, there was an update to the core Maps app that you installed from the Market), but an alternative of allowing the people who should be able to use the apps, because they've purchased a phone with a ROM that is licensed to, update them seems necessary and right.
The main point I was trying to make was that they were justifying opening android in order to be able to have a consistent platform to provide their services on, but are now effectively saying that they want to restrict who uses them.
Again, quite within their rights, but if all they cared about was people being able to access their services it would seem to be a non-issue. I'm pretty sure nuclear_eclipse is on the money.
I do agree with your update, and that seems to be effectively the compromise cyanogen has worked out (http://www.cyanogenmod.com/home/the-current-state); we'll have to see what sort of experience that provides.
With Windows Mobile, I was always running custom ROMs and tweaking. The Pre doesn't have any custom ROMs per se, but that's because the whole thing is so simple that you can easily apply patches (about 90% the user-visible system is created with plain text files--HTML, Javascript, JSON, et cetera).
I work at a T-Mo call center, and there are a lot of reps here who say the myTouch is complete crap without custom ROMs. If Google really wants to build a loyal following--particularly in the tech community--this decision needs to be reversed and /never/ repeated.
Original: http://androidandme.com/2009/09/hacks/cyanogenmod-in-trouble...
Response: http://androidandme.com/2009/09/news/google-responds-to-cyan...