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[POLL]Given HTC's recent actions against devs and ROM distribution, would you buy another HTC device

How will HTC's recent actions to stop distribution of RUUs affect your decision to buy from them?

  • This will have no impact on my buying decisions.

    Votes: 9 31.0%
  • I’d still consider a worthy HTC device but just wouldn’t root it.

    Votes: 2 6.9%
  • If that’s how it’s gonna be, I’ll never buy another HTC device!

    Votes: 18 62.1%
  • What’s an RUU or Sense?

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    29

CafeKampuchia

Android Expert
Dec 8, 2011
2,542
2,785
Pursat, Cambodia
Here's what's in the news:

HTC Forces Owner Of HTCRUU.com To Shut Down, Hand Over The ROMs (And Domain) | Android Police

HTC demanding I take down RUUs and even my custom sense roms | JMZ Taylor at reddit

HTC Cracking Down on ROM Community? | Pocketnow

HTC declares war against the dev community, takes down ROM websites across the web | androidauthority.com


Here are the main points:

  • HTC is actively pursuing websites that distribute its software (especially RUUs) and shutting them down.
  • HTC is also targeting the removal of all Sense-based ROMs including custom ROMs. This may include ROMs that port Sense to devices from other manufacturers.
  • HTC is fully within its rights to do all this as redistribution of their code (ie, Sense) is not legal without their permission. Hence, there is no legal foul on HTC's part here.
  • HTC's motivation for doing so appears to be that people mod their devices, brick them and then dishonestly take them to an HTC service center for repair/replacement on HTC's dime.
  • These activities are a move away from Android's open-source nature and toward what we see with Apple -- a closed OS totally controlled by the manufacturer.


What this means for the dev community:

  • You can no longer download an RUU to update your device manually.
  • You can no longer recover your device with an RUU if softbricked after rooting, greatly increasing the risk of rooting.
  • If you softbrick your phone and can't get the RUU, chances are you'll have to take it to an HTC service center and they'll deny you warranty service because you rooted/modded your device.
  • If you develop or distribute any ROM with Sense, HTC may come after you. This could conceivably include Nandroid backups of stock ROMs since they also contain Sense.

I hope I have represented both sides fairly so as to not poison the well. The point is this: Pursing this path is fully within HTC
 
I see 1 website taken down, in which the user had HTC in the URL and had a HTC logo and proprietary HTC software distributed on the site.


I don't see the problem.


You can get the ruu from HTC just by asking for it in the event you have an issue

I don't know why anyone would distribute a nandroid, its got all of your sensitive information inside of it
 
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It's actually more than one website. They went after another website some years ago (I can't remember which one) and the also went after user Football at XDA.

Football was releasing "leaked" ruus (which are also proprietary software). HTC thinks they're not final releases

This is simply damage control by HTC.

I'm not saying I like it, but people were way too flamboyant about distributing it
 
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Most of what Football distributed (my experience with Wildfire S and One V) were official released ROMs. I'm not arguing with you though. I'm sure there were also some unofficial leaked stuff too.

I don't know why anyone would distribute a nandroid, its got all of your sensitive information inside of it
I've seen people make and distribute Nandroids of fresh factory reset stocks ROMs dozens of times. It's a common and less painful way to manually update a stock ROM.
 
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I agree with Rx, a lot of smoke here and very little fire.

This is the same HTC that heard our petition and gave us a bootloader unlock tool (we weren't smart enough to petition for s-off at the same time, we all thought that they were the same thing lol).

There was a brand problem with the site name and with the code names being used for the RUUs.

Does it suck a little? Maybe. Does it hurt anyone needing an RUU? I don't think so, would welcome hearing otherwise. Do they know about us and XDA? Certainly, some of their staff have been members and they lurk here from time to time.

I agree with ocn, it bears watching, you never know.

I don't agree with using an anticipation of more for decision making. Wait and see what comes. If anything. Imo.
 
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The last HTC phone I owned was the MyTouch 4G, that lasted about 3 weeks. The only reason I bought it to begin with was because I was switching to Tmobile to get the Nexus S and I was switching 3 weeks before it was released.

HTC has always made their phones more of a pain to root, and therefor I have avoided them for years. Sense has always been the worst skin IMO. But, I will not ever buy another non-Nexus phone regardless of the OEM.
 
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I agree with Rx, a lot of smoke here and very little fire.

This is the same HTC that heard our petition and gave us a bootloader unlock tool (we weren't smart enough to petition for s-off at the same time, we all thought that they were the same thing lol).

There was a brand problem with the site name and with the code names being used for the RUUs.

Does it suck a little? Maybe. Does it hurt anyone needing an RUU? I don't think so, would welcome hearing otherwise. Do they know about us and XDA? Certainly, some of their staff have been members and they lurk here from time to time.

I agree with ocn, it bears watching, you never know.

I don't agree with using an anticipation of more for decision making. Wait and see what comes. If anything. Imo.
If this was only affecting jmztaylor's site I might agree with you, but remember that they shutdown footballpda and forced him to close his RUU threads at XDA and take down the RUU's he had uploaded to filefactory, which is what prompted jmztaylor to host the RUU's in the first place. Combine that with the fact that they are now encrypting OTA updates and it seems pretty clear that they are going down a path of discouraging any modification of their Sense ROM's which is pretty much what the lawyer said in jmztaylor's email thread.

IMO, this is definitely not an isolated incident and seems to be the beginning of a new direction for HTC. Perhaps they are planning to become the "secure" alternative and go after government and corporate accounts? The new blackberry.

ramjet73
 
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There was a brand problem with the site name and with the code names being used for the RUUs.

Does it suck a little? Maybe. Does it hurt anyone needing an RUU? I don't think so, would welcome hearing otherwise.
That's part of the point. They are trying to halt the distribution of RUUs, which is clear from their lawyer's correspondence with JMZ:
HTC's lawyer said:
On the ROM front, HTC does not endorse or allow distribution of its ROMs by any third party.
James had to give up all of the RUUs he had distributed as well as ROMs he had customized. The result is that making changes to a rooted device just got riskier. You'd better make sure you have a nandroid backup, but if you don't or the nandroid doesn't solve your problem, you're off to an HTC service center, likely to be denied warranty service.

This is why the headlines call it "cracking down" and "declaring war" on the dev community.
 
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Headlines always sensationalize things to get clicks. That's how they stay afloat. Everything gets blown up to get people to read.

You can get an ruu from HTC simply by asking for it. Better yet, they'll give it to you in a signed zip file to update on your storage. No pc needed.

The way I read it the lawyers were more confused than anything about what the custom roms were. These are lawyers were talking about here, not android enthusiasts.
 
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Headlines always sensationalize things to get clicks. That's how they stay afloat. Everything gets blown up to get people to read.
I wasn't referencing the articles, but the email thread itself.

You can get an ruu from HTC simply by asking for it. Better yet, they'll give it to you in a signed zip file to update on your storage. No pc needed.
And how exactly do you do that? The only RUU I've seen publicly available on the htcdev.com website was a GB version for the Evo 3D that was needed to fix a problem with their unlocking process.

The way I read it the lawyers were more confused than anything about what the custom roms were. These are lawyers were talking about here, not android enthusiasts.
Most lawyers I know are really into CYA and wouldn't say things like this unless they were authorized:

(from HTC's lawyer)
On the ROM front, HTC does not endorse or allow distribution of its ROMs by any third party. (In particular, many of those hosted here are from pre-release phones.) The ROMs pose a significant consumer protection issue for HTC, since it does not control the software and, if installed on users' devices, it could cause harm to the user. If you are aware of any third party sites providing ROMs that HTC should know about, please do let me know - it would be very helpful.
That's taken directly from the email thread and he doesn't sound confused to me. :(

ramjet73
 
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If this was only affecting jmztaylor's site I might agree with you, but remember that they shutdown footballpda and forced him to close his RUU threads at XDA and take down the RUU's he had uploaded to filefactory, which is what prompted jmztaylor to host the RUU's in the first place. Combine that with the fact that they are now encrypting OTA updates and it seems pretty clear that they are going down a path of discouraging any modification of their Sense ROM's which is pretty much what the lawyer said in jmztaylor's email thread.

IMO, this is definitely not an isolated incident and seems to be the beginning of a new direction for HTC. Perhaps they are planning to become the "secure" alternative and go after government and corporate accounts? The new blackberry.

ramjet73

None of the ota updates for my phone this year, the Sprint One X variant, the Evo 4G LTE, have been encrypted, including the recent Jellybean update. I disassembled the last one, so I am rather sure of that.

If you know of OTAs that were encrypted, I'd certainly like to hear about them.

The last RUU was encrypted, and cracked quickly enough.

Since football's closing, RUUs still seem to be plentiful in the wild.
 
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Headlines always sensationalize things to get clicks. That's how they stay afloat. Everything gets blown up to get people to read.
I wasn't referencing the articles, but the email thread itself.
+1

Simply by emailing them when you have a problem, or if you're proactive as soon as you get a device so you'll have it on hand.
No thanks. I'll keep riding with Samsung for right now and downloading the latest firmware for whatever device I own from sammobile.com whenever I need to. And I'll root and make changes to my Samsung devices without fear.
 
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None of the ota updates for my phone this year, the Sprint One X variant, the Evo 4G LTE, have been encrypted, including the recent Jellybean update. I disassembled the last one, so I am rather sure of that.

If you know of OTAs that were encrypted, I'd certainly like to hear about them.

The last RUU was encrypted, and cracked quickly enough.

Since football's closing, RUUs still seem to be plentiful in the wild.
My understanding is that the Jelly Bean 4.1.1/Sense 4+ OTA update for the One S C2 (Ville C2) is encrypted, but I got that from an XDA thread and that may be misinformation. However, the subject of this thread is the availability (or lack thereof) of HTC RUU's and why would they start encrypting them unless they are trying to discourage development of custom ROM's that are based on them? The fact that they were easily cracked is a credit to the developers, not HTC.

Is there an email address that you have used to successfully obtain RUU's from HTC? I do intend to follow through on that to see what kind of response I get at this point.

ramjet73
 
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However, the subject of this thread is the availability (or lack thereof) of HTC RUU's and why would they start encrypting them unless they are trying to discourage development of custom ROM's that are based on them? The fact that they were easily cracked is a credit to the developers, not HTC.

Is there an email address that you have used to successfully obtain RUU's from HTC? I do intend to follow through on that to see what kind of response I get at this point.

ramjet73

I've never needed an RUU so I wouldn't know the email address, but I am sympathetic.

I do know that my local Sprint corporate service center would apply an RUU for me if I asked, I've talked to them about that before out of curiosity.

I'll leave Rx to post the email address, I'd expect it to be support.

As to why the last RUU was encrypted, all we can do is speculate. Why do they roll with s-on out of the box?

When unlocked with s-on, what's notable that you can't access? The /boot and radios, and they eventually publish kernels.

That leaves the radios.

Notice the many lawsuits over radio technology between Apple and everyone else this past year around the world?

I hate encryption as a user, I'm on my third s-off model, but if you asked me as a corporate suit if I thought that locking the door made sense in today's legal climate, I guess I'd have to think about it.

HTC could have issued a cease and desist long ago to XDA, us, and everyone else linking to RUUs, yet they haven't.
 
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