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How my school rejected an app made for students

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Re: How my school rejected an app made for students

#11

Post by theiostream »

iancarroll wrote: post #9
theiostream wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Educacional is their provider for some online content (mainly games and similar stuff for young kids to have IT lessons). The grades db, memos and so on are managed by the school itself, and the news as well. Educacional, as far as my app is concerned, is simply a gateway for getting authentication tokens to /those/ services which I actually use. And, the app that I mentioned in the article (which could be considered…

> And, the app that I mentioned in the article (which could be considered as a competitor of sorts) is also being developed by the school itself. Which is probably why the school shut you down.

Their app's feature set consists of contact information, maps to the school, a gallery of static photos about the school, and webviews that display their website's content directly. It doesn't even comprise grades, memos and so on, which is what my product's focus is. That's why I don't think that's the reason.

Re: How my school rejected an app made for students

#13

Post by loumf »

aeontech wrote: post #2

Sorry to hear it. You're completely right, there's nothing unethical about what you did, and if you did get sued for it in "real world", any competent judge would laugh the plaintiff out of the room. If you really want to fight for it, perhaps you can get support from the student body and the teachers that have liked the app before? If not, well, at least you learned a lot by completing it, congratulations on that!

IANAL, but websites are allowed to control (via their terms of service) whether you can scrape them and use their data. There is a difference between accessing a website via chrome and via a native app that uses the website as a service.

Re: How my school rejected an app made for students

#14

Post by Alupis »

drchiu wrote: post #10

To the OP, I feel for you. Your app made someone over at the IT dept feel inadequate. Remember, some older IT person is trying to protect their job, no matter how crappy they're doing it. Your app, as you had mentioned, was much better than the one that they made. This, unfortunately, is the way the world is. Think about patent trolls, incumbents suing start ups that threaten to shake up the industry, etc. The way th…

I don't know where you live, but here in the US, you violated no copyright laws (or any laws or ethical clauses for the matter) by simply providing access to pre-existing works, ie. the schools website data.

If the school's website is publicly accessibly, as-in anyone can find it online, then it's public information and you can use it at your will so long as you state where the information came from (ie. not your original writing, etc).

if you are in the US, check your schools student handbook/policies... closely... if you found there is nothing restricting you, I would argue to pursue your app (and be prepared for pushback from the school).

Re: How my school rejected an app made for students

#15

Post by iancarroll »

theiostream wrote: post #11
iancarroll wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And, the app that I mentioned in the article (which could be considered as a competitor of sorts) is also being developed by the school itself. Which is probably why the school shut you down.

Their app's feature set consists of contact information, maps to the school, a gallery of static photos about the school, and webviews that display their website's content directly. It doesn't even comprise grades, memos and so on, which is what my product's focus is. That's why I don't think that's the reason.

Yeah, but the school doesn't care about the features of your app, they care that it's another app.

Re: How my school rejected an app made for students

#16

Post by Alupis »

Canada wrote: post #4

You are right, your school is wrong. They should be thinking, "We should be also serving this data in a parsible format such as JSON or XML so apps like this are easier to create and to avoid breaking things if we change our HTML" Also, facts such as grades or sports results cannot be copyright at all.

Even if it were subject to copyright, you violate no laws (in any country I know of) by simply re-posting the information and providing attribution to the original author/creators of the content. If true, any news aggregator and most websites would be getting sued every day for regurgitating information.

Re: How my school rejected an app made for students

#17

Post by siculars »

OP, consider this episode a badge of honor. You're doing the right thing. Learning valuable technology and skills for a successful future - not just in tech but in whatever you want to do. Finding a problem and doggedly pursuing a solution is what you need to do in "real life." Chalk this episode up to life experience. You have won a moral victory but as you said, don't expect them to change their minds. Graduate and move on to bigger and better things and leave these luddites in your rearview.

Re: How my school rejected an app made for students

#18

Post by droopyEyelids »

aeontech wrote: post #2

Sorry to hear it. You're completely right, there's nothing unethical about what you did, and if you did get sued for it in "real world", any competent judge would laugh the plaintiff out of the room. If you really want to fight for it, perhaps you can get support from the student body and the teachers that have liked the app before? If not, well, at least you learned a lot by completing it, congratulations on that!

Here's a little rejoinder, he is in the "real world" and they would have sued him if they felt it was possible.

Re: How my school rejected an app made for students

#19

Post by sxtxixtxcxh »

theiostream wrote: post #8
sxtxixtxcxh wrote: post #7

if you weren't aware, many school districts partner with a private firms for technical services... which include things like selling the school a web site. looking into this a bit more it would seem these services are provided by http://www.educacional.com.br/home/home.asp what i'm saying is no, the school didn't reject this app... their partner – your competition – did. edit: oh wow, i've realized i had missed half…

Educacional is their provider for some online content (mainly games and similar stuff for young kids to have IT lessons). The grades db, memos and so on are managed by the school itself, and the news as well. Educacional, as far as my app is concerned, is simply a gateway for getting authentication tokens to /those/ services which I actually use. And, the app that I mentioned in the article (which could be considered…

how much do you pay for the use of that gateway? how much do you pay for the use of their data storage? their bandwidth?

Re: How my school rejected an app made for students

#20

Post by was_hellbanned »

"In the real world I'd be sued"

Well, maybe, in the real world, if anyone even noticed, you might get sued. It would be baseless, but you wouldn't have the resources for a court battle, so you'd just tuck your tail and run.

The lesson here is that institutions can be pointlessly authoritative assholes. Between the offended IT schmucks who were churning out their own, awful app, and the administrative types who are seeking to cover their own asses, legally speaking, it really couldn't work out any other way.

Oh, and since they can just kick you out of school, with no meaningful recourse, you're really getting a lesson in what it's like to be the little innovator.

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