Motorola has disappointed ROM-tinkerers with the news that, unlike the Motorola DROID, future Android smartphones from the company won’t be supplied with open bootloaders.  Instead, Motorola will be “securing” the software on handsets like the DROID X and DROID 2, making loading custom ROMs significantly more difficult.

The company says their justification is “driven by a number of different business factors” and that is common practice; the DROID having an open bootloader, in fact, is described as being done for “a specific business reason” though that is not detailed.  ”The use of open source software, such as the Linux kernel or the Android platform, in a consumer device does notrequire the handset running such software to be open for re-flashing” the company points out, highlighting that Motorola does “comply with the licenses, including GPLv2, for each of the open source packages in our handsets.”

[Thanks Toby!]