Can Android be truly 'open' on the T-Mobile-locked G1?

[DesignDawg]

I think that the fact that the hardware is designed to run an OS that everyone in the world will have access to at the source level means that there's really no possibility of these phones staying locked. I also doubt TMobile would go to any lengths to combat "hacking". They probably have a simple little check in there to make sure it sees a TMobile sim, and it ends there.

Something IMPORTANT TO NOTE about all this is that the source is being relased under Apache v2, which means that developers are NOT REQUIRED to re-contribute anything they've added to the code. This is a business-freindly side of open source, because it allows people to have intellectual property they can control and charge for.

So, while it may not be easy, possible, or ideal to hack a TMobile release of the software on the phone, I doubt it will be much more difficult than just replacing the software on the phone istelf with a fresh, unbranded version of the OS.