https://www.google.com/android/uncertified/ just need to register here as of earlier this year apparently
Generally hardware warranty will remain if it's purely a hardware issue - you can always flash back anyway.
Android is free software in the sense that you can make and distribute modified versions. If app vendors choose to discriminate against those versions that doesn't make it unfree any more than software supporting windows and not Linux makes Linux unfree
I don't think that's enough to make it free software, and "free software in the sense..." is nonsensical. Free software would guarantee the continuance of that freedom. Since that guarantee doesn't exist, Google could place limitations on the Play Store at any time. The fact that they haven't makes the example less clear, but it doesn't make Android free software. Even Google doesn't claim that it is.
Play store isn't open source at all.
Amazon was able to take Android and put it on their extremely popular devices with 0 support from Google, no play store. That's what I call freedom
It is extremely well integrated into it, by design.
Isn’t the entire point of Google’s certification process to encourage app vendors to make that choice?
Citation, please?
Some years ago I had Samsung S2 where unlocking the bootloader was an offline activity. I don't remember how but doing that was quick and easy. Now I own a MotoG4 where unlocking means going to some website, entering my email address and then receiving unlock code in my email. If Motorola knows my email address, or can link the (supposedly unique) unlock code to my phone, what's stopping them from voiding my warranty?
I have a hunch that newer versions of some mainstream phones do not allow unlocking the bootloader, and this is going to become more and more common.
It's not GNU/Linux that's not free, but it makes it hard to use a GNU/Linux system that is free.
Unfortunately most people consider the play store to be a necessity, so its non-free nature is a problem.
I'd say it's a bit of a different situation, since the two are not being designed to work together and aren't even being developed by the same people. If the Ubuntu developers made your proprietary app key to the useful running of the system, which is the more exact analogy, then I'd say yeah, they would have made it non-free.
on the later you submit patches, they will be included in the next 2 to 3 versions of public release (if they dont't add any feature that impacts google's ad bottom line, for example, adding any sort of referrer control to chrome), then you have to hope that in those 2-3 version cycle your device is still supported, now you just have to wait for the convenient over the ait update provided by your telco or phone manufacturer (in most cases you actually need both entities to take part)
there's a very good reason the "supported device list" of all forks is always very, very small (even with the outlandish claims on most of them such as "supported. touch screen and modem still not working" )
just becuase the build steps for your fork project automates some of that driver/kernel lifting, doesn't make it any better.
Why not?
I'm not saying open source is bad and everyone should prefer free software. It's just a good example of the difference between the two in practice rather than in some debate about licenses and the abstract principles behind them.