Quote:
Originally Posted by Akirainblack
As both the Kindle and android devices are already wide open to this so it's not the same changes being made.
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Kindle is not wide open at all.
The system inside Kindle is very similar to the Linux OS you can have in your PC. The difference is it interacts with the user via single application called Framework and it does not allow launching other applications besides Kindlets but Kindlets are not full featured applications, they are more Framework addons and no Kindlet can be launched if not signed with a certificate issued by Amazon.
The only way how to change contents of the operating system (i.e. how to add full featured applications or modify installed software) is to 'update' Kindle the same way Amazon uses to upgrade firmware. Unfortunately this entrance to Kindle is blocked by a troll that lets in only update bundles signed by Amazon certificate.
This behaviour is considered chutzpah and is usually condemned by the open source movement because, as most of the Kindle firmware is licensed under GPL v2, it effectively renders General Public Licence 2 useless.
This awful trick is also known as 'tivoization' and its usage was the main impulse that gave birth to GPL v3, that strictly prohibits such circumvention of the license.
What 'jailbreak' does is just smuggling in another certificate used for checking the update bundles. That allows installing your own 'update' that is launched by Kindle firmware as a process with root privileges when installed.
Users don't have any access to Kindle OS, root or non-root. So installing jailbreak is not just 'rooting', not just 'jailbreaking' a sandbox (there's no such sandbox from Linux perspective, there's no environment for apps execution at all), it's opening your device for software modifications and the right to do such modifications is guaranteed by GPL. Getting root access is just a side effect.