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Comment by onetimeuse001 | Hacker News Reader

If my guess is right and "Aliyun" is an Android fork, then cry me a river -- if Acer wants to sell an official Android device they shouldn't expect to make money selling gray market clones on the side.

Lots of speculation from all of us, but assuming that the story is true, you are wrong. First Google says that Android is open source and free to improve so what's the big deal?

Secondly, Google holds a large percentage of the-mobile market through the official Android so anti-trust is listening. A clear case of anti-competitive behavior since Google would not be able to control the non-official forks.

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Indeed, what's the big deal? Alibaba is free to improve Android, and they did. Google is free to sell (or not sell) their non-free additions to Android to whoever they want. They presumably choose not to sell to companies producing unbranded Android forks.

Alibaba needs to pick an unencumbered hardware partner if they want to go down this road. Amazon (and whoever the Kindle OEM is) made it work, so it's not like it's impossible.

(Edit for clarity: again, this is presupposing that Alibaba is shipping modified Google-written software without a contract with Google. It's also presupposing that there are manufacturers -- like the Kindle's -- willing/able to take business making unbranded Android devices. If either becomes untrue, then this is definitely anticompetitive.)

Except that a software license can hardly be called open source if you require a contract from the writer in order to use the software.

This is backwards. Google's closed apps aren't open source. Acer needs a license to use them. Alibaba can use whatever it wants, they just can't get Acer to manufacture a device containing their (closed-source!) modifications to Android without putting Acer's existing software licenses in jeopardy.

If Alibaba's product can't reach market, then that's a problem. But given that many unlicensed Android-derived devices are in production right now, I don't see the problem. They picked the wrong OEM (or Acer misjudged its relationship with Google, or both). Oops.

>Secondly, Google holds a large percentage of the-mobile market through the official Android so anti-trust is listening. A clear case of anti-competitive behavior since Google would not be able to control the non-official forks.

The whole Chinese market is anti-competitive to outsiders.

Acer sells in US and prob in EU too.

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