[citation][nom]partofthepuzzle[/nom]IAC, I don't really see why Motorola would want to alienate the Android hacker community. These are the users that are the most dedicated and the modifications that they provide are often not forthcoming from the phone vendors and they serve to keep the users on the platform! Enthusiasts with modified ROMS are walking advertisements for Motorola, HTC, etc. al. These manufacturers are much too paranoid about this whole issue.[/citation]
Not Motorola at all, actually. It's Verizon, putting the screws to Motorola to gimp their phones so Verizon can save their cash cow of upcharging for basic functionality (like tethering). It's the same reason Google never brought the Nexus1 to Verizon, because Google didn't want to gimp their showcase phone for the Android OS.