I went and read the article in full and I say that my views runs with the writer of the article. It really doesn't sound like the MOD'er, "Cyanogen” tried to do anything deliberately to redistribute the non-open source applications Google includes on the G1 (mine is white, so I was intrigued by this article). He just included the them because they left the binaries out there for people. "Cyanogen” just grabbed them and compiled them because Google didn't pay enough attention to what it lay out there for people to play with. Also, given how the OOBUE (Out Of Box User Experience) anchors the G1 to a gmail account it would seem natural to include the app if the binary was avaiiable and out in the open to download. Google needs to be more precise what portions they consider open-source. I suppose - having not read further into this thought - they need the make the non-FOSS stuff available in the market place if they can no longer distribute these CSS (Closed Source Software) app's when they release a MOD'ed version of Android.
My 2 yen :-)
Brian