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AnkiDroid: Google Play no longer allowing Open Collective donation link

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Re: AnkiDroid: Google Play no longer allowing Open Collective donation link

#131

Post by alerighi »

Being a developer, I can say that working with Google is a pain. There is no possibility to talk with a human, all communication is answered by the same AI-generated response that links you to the same AI-generated documentation.

And if such AI does something wrong (which it does) no matter what they WILL REMOVE your app. Because they don't care about you. Sometimes the only way out is to publish the app again with another package identifier, because once they flagged it even if you remove all reference to the offending feature there is no way that they will accept it (it unfortunately happened, fortunately before releasing the app to the public so we could switch without affecting users).

In some sense I prefer Apple (and I say it as an Android user), you surely pay an annual fee to publish to the store, but if you have some issues you can open a ticket where a fucking real human will look into it and answer you, and explain what to to.

Re: AnkiDroid: Google Play no longer allowing Open Collective donation link

#132

Post by riedel »

skeledrew wrote: post #39

Apps need to exit the Play Store. I have a whole slew of apps which haven't been updated for a while now because Aurora Store isn't working because of whatever Google of doing. Meanwhile the ones installed via FDroid and other means are perfectly up to date. It's a crappy state of affairs as Google continues to close the boiling Android frog.

90% of my apps (all except for banking, streaming and ev charging app) are installed without play store. Beyond FDroid with custom repos, I actually came to like Komi-Store in combination with obtainium. I really wonder what will happen when Google enforces their own registered developer signatures. I hope there is a crucial mass of apps outside of Play store until then to generate some heard protests.

Re: AnkiDroid: Google Play no longer allowing Open Collective donation link

#133

Post by alerighi »

neves wrote: post #94

Digital infrastructure became so important that it must be regulated. We can't leave app stores at the whim of mega corporations.

Nooo what you are saying communist. I also think so, but each time someone (typically the EU) does something in the direction (e.g. digital market act) the US government, companies and citizens accuse us to be communists, against progress, that we overregulate, that the "free market" regulates by itself, and similar bullshit.

Re: AnkiDroid: Google Play no longer allowing Open Collective donation link

#134

Post by devsda »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #97
devsda wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When do we stop this instinctive response of "well you can still do it in an only slightly convoluted way" everytime a corporate does something bad. Windows added ads - well you can disable them, if you don't like it. Chrome brought up mv3 - well you can still use mv2, it is only optional. Reddit locking subreddits behind login wall - well there's always old.reddit Android moving everything to playstore - there's alw…

sometimes people share a problem and want solutions or workarounds other times people share a problem and just want to feel validated ( "yeah that sucks dude" ) it sounds like you wanted the 2nd but got the 1st

There are solutions and then there are workarounds. what we see are workarounds, not solutions.

Even in software, you can only patch so many workarounds without fixing the issue. Eventually fatigue sets in or we run out of workarounds and just publish the bug as "expected behavior" don't we?

I don't want the workarounds to distract from the need for a proper fix.

Re: AnkiDroid: Google Play no longer allowing Open Collective donation link

#135

Post by NetMageSCW »

forshaper wrote: post #95
brainwad wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the "trap door" here is just that you can't buy a phone and immediately start loading apps I'm sorry, I thought I owned the phone I bought, and had a right to decide what software I want on it whenever I want.

It's still surprising to me how fast we lost ownership norms, and most seem satisfied with renting the right to be a sort of peasant.

Unless you own your own cell carrier and built towers across your country, you can’t own a phone.

Re: AnkiDroid: Google Play no longer allowing Open Collective donation link

#136

Post by notatoad »

skeledrew wrote: post #39

Apps need to exit the Play Store. I have a whole slew of apps which haven't been updated for a while now because Aurora Store isn't working because of whatever Google of doing. Meanwhile the ones installed via FDroid and other means are perfectly up to date. It's a crappy state of affairs as Google continues to close the boiling Android frog.

if i had a commercial app that i wanted to distribute off the play store, what are the options?

Re: AnkiDroid: Google Play no longer allowing Open Collective donation link

#138

Post by kam »

ajross wrote: post #120
skeledrew wrote: post #39

Apps need to exit the Play Store. I have a whole slew of apps which haven't been updated for a while now because Aurora Store isn't working because of whatever Google of doing. Meanwhile the ones installed via FDroid and other means are perfectly up to date. It's a crappy state of affairs as Google continues to close the boiling Android frog.

This just should not be the top comment here. HN being HN, it's way, way too bent out of shape about the company name attached to the app store and not the minutiae of tax policy, which is what this is really about. The app in question declares itself this way: AnkiDroid is a free, open-source flashcard app for Android with over 10 million installs, used worldwide for various purposes, primarily in medical education…

Google is not the payment processor. This is about the app including a link to a donation page on opencollective.com.

Other 501(c)(6) organizations you might have heard of include the Linux Foundation and the Rust Foundation.

Re: AnkiDroid: Google Play no longer allowing Open Collective donation link

#139

Post by voakbasda »

echelon wrote: post #104
renegat0x0 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are more and more apps on f-droid. On my end the experience was more pleasant on f-droid than on Google. On f-droid I had to manually push some things, in repositories. That I solved in a week or so. On Google end I had to verify my account. Which was not easy feat. - had to provide my ID several times, because it got rejected multiple times - I uploaded driving license - the verification process was st…

F-Droid is a nerd solution and will be used by 0.00001% of the total market. There are more people that will use Linux on desktop than will use F-Droid. We need governments to mandate both Apple and Google to allow web installs of apps. No requirement for Apple/Google pay, Apple/Google login, or Apple/Google services. Total freedom for users, for developers, and for competitors. This duopoly has fucked over America a…

The government is not going to regulate them, any more than they are going to fix the countless other cartels that operate with impunity.

Re: AnkiDroid: Google Play no longer allowing Open Collective donation link

#140

Post by ajross »

kam wrote: post #138
ajross wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just should not be the top comment here. HN being HN, it's way, way too bent out of shape about the company name attached to the app store and not the minutiae of tax policy, which is what this is really about. The app in question declares itself this way: AnkiDroid is a free, open-source flashcard app for Android with over 10 million installs, used worldwide for various purposes, primarily in medical education…

Google is not the payment processor. This is about the app including a link to a donation page on opencollective.com. Other 501(c)(6) organizations you might have heard of include the Linux Foundation and the Rust Foundation.

Do LF and Rust solicit individual donations via phone apps (or at all, really)?

Indeed, those are structured as corporate-funded consortiums of exactly the type you'd be very suspicious of if, say, your kernel or compiler logs started stuffing a donation link into the stream!

Note that GNU software does historically mention donations (not in the logs AFAIK), and indeed the FSF is a 501(c)(3).

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