Android ADB redistribution [closed]

Question

Are you allowed to redistribute the Android ADB to the end users?

Is there a distributive / package that might be included in the installer?

We are considering to use it in order to provide a USB connectivity between our Android app and a desktop app. Is there any better ways you can suggest to easily establish a USB bridge in this situation?

Answer 1

AOSP includes ADB source and has fairly liberal licensing terms, so if you were to determine that those were compatible with your needs you could build ADB yourself. It's a bit tricky to build it without building the rest, but it can be done if you carefully construct a Makefile and move some of the includes and dependencies from a utilities folder around.

Answer 2

I believe that distributing the Android adb executable is perfectly legal. The SDK license agreement for android sdk at http://developer.android.com/sdk/terms.html has the following clause:

3.5 Use, reproduction and distribution of components of the SDK licensed under an open source software license are governed solely by the terms of that open source software license and not this License Agreement.

And since the adb client, which is located under the android tree at platform/system/core/adb is licensed under the http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0, it should be perfectly legal.

But I'm not a lawyer, so don't take my word for granted and look for professional advice.

Answer 3

Just to close this issue and probably help somebody else with similar questions in the future:

It seems that the Android SDK (which includes ADB) is not allowed for redistribution. Quoting from Android’s T&C: “3.3 Except to the extent required by applicable third party licenses, you may not copy (except for backup purposes), modify, adapt, redistribute, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, or create derivative works of the SDK or any part of the SDK. Except to the extent required by applicable third party licenses, you may not load any part of the SDK onto a mobile handset or any other hardware device except a personal computer, combine any part of the SDK with other software, or distribute any software or device incorporating a part of the SDK.”