[Android-tools-devel] Android SDK license

[Jack Dodds]

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I sent this post to debian-android-tools at lists.debian.org but
that list seems to be inactive. If this post appears twice in
anyone's Inbox, my apologies.

I have searched the list archives for a few years back for posts
with "licence" of "license" in the Subject and did not find
anything that really answers my question. So I hope someone can
explain.

The wiki at https://wiki.debian.org/AndroidTools includes the
statement:

"The binaries for the Android SDK downloadable from Google have
a proprietary license but the source code is free software so
Debian is packaging it."

But, the wiki also contains a link to an introduction to
building apps at

https://wiki.debian.org/AndroidTools/IntroBuildingApps

and in that page there is the statement: "Accepting SDK license
- - - To use the android-sdk you must accept its license. At the
present moment there are some ways to do so, but none of them is
perfect."

There a reference to "a git repository containing all the needed
licenses" at

https://github.com/Shadowstyler/android-sdk-licenses.git

But, the file called android-sdk-license in that repository
contains nothing but a 40 character hex string, presumably a
hash of the actual license.

So, my questions:

1. If the source code is "free software", why does the user have
to accept a license?

2. Where is the full text of the license to which the user is
agreeing?


Searching for the actual license on the Internet, all I could
find was this:

https://developer.android.com/studio/terms

which includes the following [EMPHASIS added by me]

This is the Android Software Development Kit License Agreement
...
1.3 A "COMPATIBLE IMPLEMENTATION" means any Android device that
(i) complies with the Android Compatibility Definition document,
which can be found at the Android compatibility website
(http://source.android.com/compatibility) and which may be
updated from time to time; and (ii) successfully passes the
Android Compatibility Test Suite (CTS).

2.1 ... You may not use the SDK if you do not accept the License
Agreement.
...

3.1 Subject to the terms of the License Agreement, Google grants
you a limited, worldwide, royalty-free, non-assignable,
non-exclusive, and non-sublicensable license to use the SDK
SOLELY to develop applications for COMPATIBLE IMPLEMENTATIONS of
Android.

3.2 You MAY NOT use this SDK to develop applications for OTHER
PLATFORMS (including non-compatible implementations of Android)
or to develop another SDK
...

The above is clearly NOT a free software licence. I hope that
this is the proprietary license for the SDK binaries referred to
above - and that the licence for the source is something
different.


Thanks for your help,

Jack Dodds

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