Android ADB redistribution
adb, android, installation, licensing, usb
Solution
I believe that distributing the Android adb executable is perfectly legal. The SDK license agreement for android sdk at http://developer.android.com/sdk/terms.html has the following clause:
3.5 Use, reproduction and distribution of components of the SDK licensed under an open source software license are governed solely by the terms of that open source software license and not this License Agreement.
And since the adb client, which is located under the android tree at platform/system/core/adb is licensed under the http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0, it should be perfectly legal.
But I'm not a lawyer, so don't take my word for granted and look for professional advice.
Problem
Are you allowed to redistribute the Android ADB to the end users? Is there a distributive / package that might be included in the installer? We are considering to use it in order to provide a USB connectivity between our Android app and a desktop app. Is there any better ways you can suggest to easily establish a USB bridge in this situation?