one example
Sorry, that's not what you think it is... Read the comments of the link you provided and you'll find out that HTC was sending a cease-and-desist for hosting HTC code, NOT for changing or rooting the phone. HTC doesn't care if you change the home screen, just that you cannot post their ROM code for their own UI on your site. BIG difference there.
The same gets done with the iPhone, thus my point: You have to root/jailbreak either to get your freedom.
No you don't. You can install alternative home screens on an Android phone without rooting. You cannot do that on an iPhone. Simple as that.
That's what I was talking about for the lack of freedom. Android as an open source product is NOT the fully usable, full-featured product you get from any carrier. It's only the basics. People think you can just modify the software on the phone and redistribute for others (like you can do with open source), but much of Android -- as advertised and shipped to consumers -- is in fact NOT open source. Kind of like like iOS or OS X.
HTC doesn't care if you change the home screen, just that you cannot post their ROM code for their own UI on your site. BIG difference there.
Wait on that one too. Hardware locks just started coming down on Android phones. Of course, Apple can't send an enforceable C&D anymore because jailbreaking -- an iPhone or Android phone -- is now perfectly legal. You like to say "just root" the Android phone. Uh, this is effectively the same as jailbreaking an iPhone. You can do anything with an iPhone too if you jailbreak it.
You can install alternative home screens on an Android phone without rooting. You cannot do that on an iPhone. Simple as that.
If alternate home screens are so important to you, then don't buy the product. The fact remains BOTH platforms are artificially limited in what you can do, and BOTH platforms need rooting/jailbreaking to get around those limitations.
Android breaks a basic premise of open source, so users shouldn't consider it to be open source on the same level as Linux even though Android is touted as being Linux-based. I'm still not quite sure how they pulled this off without violating the GPL. They must be toeing a very fine line.