>>>>I have nothing on the radar which would make a fork of android (from creating and installing POV both) illicit - IANAL of course...
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>>Not sure about Europe- but Android phones are set up to block data tethering for US Carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile unless you've paid the carrier. It's built right into the OS. There's a hack to avoid that, or if you use one of the Android hacks out of China, it's not there at all. Every time Google adds something to disadvantage Android users, IMHO the forks and fragmentation will proliferate. Then Google will come up with barriers to hacking, then they'll be subverted and on it goes.
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>My Android supports tethering right out of the box (Nexus 4), on T-Mobile. So I don't think it's Google adding those types of things, but the carriers.

On that point you are correct, but Google tries to move data from the device into the cloud - where it can be scanned, if not billed. So they made writing to msdhc more difficult (4.4.1 AFAIR, citing security again), bordering on useless as each app is supposed to onlyy write into its own special area. This can be circumvented (sometimes at vendor, sometimes at carrier level) but is IMO right along the ideas John mentions.