One of the benefits of using Nexus phone and tablet hardware is that Google maintains download pages where you can grab past and current Android images and driver binaries for all of your devices. Regular visitors will notice that images for the 2013 Nexus 7 still haven't been posted, and it looks like Qualcomm is the reason why.

Android Police summarized the timeline of events best: the speculation began when (now ex-) Android Open Source Project technical lead Jean-Baptiste "JBQ" Queru began complaining on Twitter that "lawyers sabotage[d] the launch [he] spent six months working on." Asked when images for the new Nexus 7 would become available, Queru said that he didn't know when or even if they would be made available, and that images for the (also Qualcomm-powered) Nexus 4 had been temporarily pulled due to unspecified problems. He then pointed out that images for the (you guessed it, Qualcomm-equipped) Nexus One weren't available either.

After those initial reports were published, Queru seemingly confirmed suspicions when he announced on his Google+ page that he quit the Android Open Source Project. He said that "people [had] figured out" why he was leaving. This time he was less oblique, blaming Qualcomm's Adreno GPU specifically and again mentioning that he spent six months trying to prevent the issue.

It's still possible that these issues will be resolved and that images for the 2013 Nexus 7 will be made public eventually. There were issues with the Nexus 4 image, after all: originally the image was posted, then pulled, and then reposted later. Either way, it appears that this situation cost Android one of its more visible developers.