Benjamin Edelman, a professor at Harvard Business School that offers consulting services for Microsoft (one of Google’s arch rivals  in terms of mobile OS) just revealed a set of documents that put Google’s Android OEM licensing terms in a not-so- favorable light, to say the least.

We all know and love the “Don’t be evil” mantra of Google and also we’ve learned since the beginning that Android is an open source operating system, and its basic services are free for all and the like. New documents released by Benjamin Edelman reveal that Google puts serious pressure on mobile phone manufacturers with very strict licensing terms, when it comes to using their Google Play apps package installed on their devices.

It seems obvious that an Android smartphone is not really a droid without the Google Play apps, but the most disturbing thing in the leaked documents is that Google forces the OEMs to include ALL of Google’s applications pre-installed on their smartphones, in a “all or nothing” kind of a deal. Obviously, these strict terms only apply if an OEM decides to use Google’s licensed Play Store. If a manufacturer decides to go for Android only, everything’s alright.

The same licensing agreement puts an interdiction on any Android forks, declaring that OEMs are totally forbidden from developing any kind of apps/software that could fragment  the Android OS. Distributing any third-party software development kit based on Android OS is a no-no. Google has and wants even more control over its apps, in the way they are released and distributed. Basically, everything must be done via Play Store, and it’s this way or the highway.

The leaked documents put the openness of the Android OS in a very different light, or at least the way in which Google sees Android as  being an open-source-free-for-all thing, let’s close the argument with the most ironic part of the “agreement”: