Last week saw the release of ChevronWP7, a tool to allow development and installation of Windows Phone 7 applications on any phone, without having to go through the Microsoft approval process. The tool was not universally well-received, as it was felt by some to be a big step towards enabling application piracy on the new platform. Under pressure from Microsoft, the program has now been removed by its creators.
ChevronWP7's developers claimed two broad objectives for the software. One, it enabled homebrew development. That is, it enabled people to write applications without having to pay $99 to Microsoft for a Windows Phone 7 Marketplace account, without distribution via Marketplace, and without having to submit their software to Microsoft for validation. Two, it enabled development for everyone, including residents of those countries that are not currently eligible for Marketplace accounts.
Official Windows Phone 7 developers—those who pay the $99—can unlock their handsets to allow deployment of custom software without going through Marketplace. This is a necessary part of the development process, since absent this ability they would have no way to test their software on real hardware. ChevronWP7 enabled the same thing—deployment of custom software without going through Marketplace—but without the $99 payment.
The piracy problem
This ability to load custom applications without going through Marketplace is what raised piracy concerns. Piracy is widespread on jailbroken iPhones, and with Windows Phone 7's market position already somewhat tenuous, piracy for that platform could send third-party developers running for the hills. A key part to any pirate smartphone application ecosystem is the ability to load applications without going through the official channels (the App Store on iPhone, Marketplace on Windows Phone 7), and this is precisely what ChevronWP7 enables.
The ChevronWP7 developers insisted that they were not in favor of piracy—homebrew development was their focus—and that their tool did not enable piracy. In particular, their tool does nothing to work around the DRM imposed on applications downloaded from the Marketplace.
However, it's not really that simple. ChevronWP7 applications can do, essentially, anything. While the official Marketplace bans applications that use native code or try to tamper with the operating system, there's no such prohibition on ChevronWP7 apps. As such, an application developed and deployed with ChevronWP7 could modify the operating system in some way to facilitate piracy schemes.
For example, many applications on the Marketplace permit a trial mode. When a user runs a trial application, the full application gets installed to the phone. The application then asks the operating system "Am I operating in trial mode?", and if the answer is "yes", the application can restrict its features in whatever way the developer sees fit. If the operating system can be tampered with, it could potentially be made to lie, and indiscriminately respond "no" to the trial mode query. In this way, application trials could be freely downloaded from the Marketplace, and then unlocked using a ChevronWP7 tool.
More robust piracy schemes that don't depend on trial mode may also be possible. The unprotected install packages for Windows Phone 7 applications can be downloaded directly. This is plainly undesirable; Microsoft's current, lame, response is to say that developers should obfuscate their programs, but there's really no good reason for unencrypted packages to be so readily available. Though one cannot take one of these installation packages and directly deploy them to a ChevronWP7-unlocked handset, it seems likely that the downloaded packages can be rebuilt and deployed to unlocked handsets. If someone figures out a way to do this, Windows Phone 7 will have no effective anti-piracy measures at all.
I don't doubt the good intentions of the ChevronWP7 developers for a moment—but I do think their stance was naive, to say the least. Piracy has never been the only reason to jailbreak a platform, but it has always been a significant part of the jailbreak subculture. ChevronWP7 may not be a piracy tool in and of itself, but it's nonetheless a useful precursor to the development of piracy tools, and if developers create desirable applications for Windows Phone 7, you can bet that people will want to pirate them.
Redmond's response
Microsoft's public reaction to ChevronWP7 was muted. The company made a fairly standard statement—potentially the tool could void your warranty, brick your phone, and set your dog on fire, so you shouldn't use it—but the company made no indication that unlocked phones would be barred from Marketplace or other Windows Live services.
However, the decision to pull the tool suggests that Redmond's response was rather more negative than the statement let on. The program was apparently deeply unpopular within the company, no doubt because of the broader risks to the platform that it created. The last thing Microsoft can afford is for Windows Phone 7 to be ravaged by piracy—the company has invested heavily in attracting third-party developers, and the ability to promise "no piracy" to those developers is surely a point in the platform's favor, one the company does not want to lose.
The ChevronWP7 developers say that they pulled the tool to foster a better working relationship with Microsoft, with the goal being to create an environment in which homebrew development is possible; some observers suggest that legal threats were also made. How homebrew development might work without also endangering the integrity of the platform is so far unclear, and it is not presently obvious that any such solution will ever materialize.
As for ChevronWP7 itself, the genie is already out of the bottle. In spite of being pulled, the tool is out there being redistributed. A piracy system that builds upon it seems inevitable, with only lack of developer and user interest likely to prevent it from materializing.
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