It's illegal because it crashes the app on the latest versions of Android. It's an illegal operation, not "against the law in N countries" type of illegal, more the "Divide by 0" type of illegal.

The out of touch is my personal assessment of reading through the code: They doesn't seem to recognize the benefits of the modern Android code styles which would reduce their workload, decrease the boilerplate they're writing, and increase the stability of the app overall.