How do you know that the people that extracted and posted TF2D don’t work for HTC? I know from a very reliable source that things of a similar nature have happend before on XDA.

I don’t know where they work, of course. However, unless they got HTC’s permission to release it, it doesn’t matter. (In fact, it would probably be worse, because they could not only get sued for copyright violation, but lose their jobs, too.)

The important thing in intellectual property isn’t whether you work for the owner or not, but what permission you have to distribute it.

For example, I have a software patent at IBM. Because I worked at IBM, I had to assign rights to that patent to IBM. If I tried to create a program that used that patent without IBM’s permission, I could get sued even though I’m the inventor.

If HTC wanted this software distributed to other Windows Mobile owners, I find it hard to believe they’d release it through XDA Developers instead of making it available for download on their own site.

Steve

If it were available commercially I would buy it. Though with the talent at XDA Developers I am not so sure that it is not the manufacturers who benefit from the work they do. Most of them offer what they work out for free and although don’t expect it accept donations for they’re work. They fix many of the issues that people experience and probably keep more people buying new devices because of it.

Don’t get me wrong. Many people at XDA Developers do great work fixing problems and developing new software. Those are all good things that don’t involve stealing (although fixing bugs could arguably fall into reverse engineering, which many software licenses prohibit).

However, I’m not sure how much benefit the OEMs really get out of it. I’ve read that most people don’t even install additional software on their devices (or install very few programs). Apparently, we geeks are their biggest market. :-)

Regardless, though, you can’t possibly argue that extracting the software developed by the OEM and making it available on other devices helps that OEM. It is stealing their competitive advantage. In the days of me-too hardware where lots of devices have similar specs, software can be the big differentiator, and extraction ruins that advantage.

Of course, if you accept that most people don’t install software, you can argue that extraction doesn’t hurt the OEM much, but the fact is that there is probably some harm in doing this.

For example, imagine that lots of people installed this software and therefore decided not to buy an HTC device. What incentive is there for HTC to develop cool stuff in the future if they know it will just be stolen?

Yes, HTC could sell it themselves, but they’re in the device business, not the software business. If they want to use the software as a competitive advantage for their hardware, that’s their decision.

Steve

But I bet if somebody took those stolen extracted programs, put their own name on them and tried passing them off as their work, the hacker would get his panties in a bunch over “credit”.

Is actually getting software legally too much work?

Steve