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Response to “WireGuard: great protocol, but skip the Mac app”

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Re: Response to “WireGuard: great protocol, but skip the Mac app”

#111

Post by evgen »

z3t4 wrote: post #88
segfaultbuserr wrote: post #31

> We faced rejections in submitting the app, because they decided to change their policy on the app having a link in the "About WireGuard" tool window to www.wireguard.com/donations/ (which they previously had allowed explicitly; now they want 30% or something) Last year Google started to ban donation links in FOSS apps, WireGuard was one of the first victims [0], completely removed from the store. I didn't know that…

IANAL - but I'm pretty sure the app platforms are breaking many laws here, not allowing people to freely donate. Like free speech, able to ask for help, freedom to do business, abuse of monopoly. They might be able to get away with a transaction fee, and a store fee, but they should not be able to censor text, links, etc. This is the new Mafia. If you don't play by their rules (theirs, not the law) your business dies…

Yes, you are obviously NAL. The rules are clear and are applied evenly; it is the even application of the rule that is causing the problem here. FOSS-advocates think they are special snowflakes who deserve an exception to the rule about asking for payment. The app stores (both Apple and Google) clearly disagree and think that this is something that will be easily gamed and abused.

Nothing is preventing these apps from simply saying 'if you want to learn more or support our project go to ' instead of directly linking the URL to a donation. Do that and there is no problem.

Re: Response to “WireGuard: great protocol, but skip the Mac app”

#112

Post by rajveermalviya »

segfaultbuserr wrote: post #103
comeonseriously wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, is does this mean for a charity they take 30% also? For example, here's United Way for Chester County (wherever that is)[0]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/united-way-of-chester-county/i... They have a donate button (last image on right). Does Apple take 30% of all that is donated? If so, I find that to be repulsive. [0] I picked Unite Way because they're a large org, not because of any other reason.

Not sure about Apple, but I know Google has special treatments for formally registered 501(c)(3) orgs and they are allowed to seek donation directly without going through Google Play's commission. Update: Apple Pay appears to have similar policies [0]. [0] https://developer.apple.com/apple-pay/nonprofits/

Same for Signal? They have a donate button in android app.

Re: Response to “WireGuard: great protocol, but skip the Mac app”

#113

Post by plg- »

tasn wrote: post #44

The iOS and macOS apps have been the biggest point of stress and frustration when building EteSync[1]. The API is buggy as hell and very limited (if at all available) and the review process is arbitrary and can cause updates to be rejected. You can never know if your workarounds will be accepted or rejected. Sometimes they can even get rejected in future app updates. The EteSync experience is subpar on Apple devices,…

> it's beyond me why would anyone willingly use an Apple product

Final users don't see this mess.

Re: Response to “WireGuard: great protocol, but skip the Mac app”

#114

Post by zaarn »

comeonseriously wrote: post #102
zaarn wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple solution, there are human reviewers for this kinda reason and if the rule is "Open Source Apps get a donation button" then not any random can loophole around. Heck, if both Apple and Google offered a solution by which you provide the source code to build, any necessary secret variables for the build and then it gives you those extra privileges, it would be nice. But that costs money the open source apps don't…

Apple could win a hole lot of points here by processing the donations themselves. The upside for them is that it would close the loophole.

Only if they don't take a fee, to effectively steal donation money for themselves.

Re: Response to “WireGuard: great protocol, but skip the Mac app”

#115

Post by themacguffinman »

tasn wrote: post #96
themacguffinman wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the free and open source Wireguard need to be a popular VPN app? One benefit of being more popular is that they get more contributions, but given that they barely get enough contributions to fix macOS-specific bugs as it is, it's not clear that the benefit outweighs the costs. Apple and Apple users respond to tangible consequences; appeasement doesn't seem to be working, and it doesn't seem to be benefiting the…

Why build it in the first place if you don't want people to use it? Also, a lot of VPN services are moving to WireGuard, they will hopefully contribute to WireGuard development in the future. You can't really do cost/benefit assessment based on current contribution values. If you did that, no startup will ever start, and no open source project will ever be created, as upon creation the usage is almost always zero.

Windows & Linux users will still be able to use it. Most popular VPN services seem to develop their own custom desktop clients (they do this for OpenVPN); they will definitely contribute to Wireguard, but I'm not sure that they will contribute much to the desktop-specific parts of the "official" apps.

Edit: I should add that there is another cost/benefit assessment here: if Wireguard developers continue to appease Apple, Apple will continue to make life difficult for them as there will be no pressure for it to behave better.

Re: Response to “WireGuard: great protocol, but skip the Mac app”

#116

Post by scaladev »

enriquto wrote: post #100
toyg wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when that button is clicked by, perhaps, only 10% of the users 10%? I think FOSS developers would be extremely happy if even 1% clicked on that kind of button. I reckon the actual stat is closer to 0.01%... This is absolute scroogerism from our mobile overlords. We badly need a really-open alternative to the Google/Apple world of feudal taxes.

> We badly need a really-open alternative F-Droid is a thing

For now.

When they change that optional setting they introduced recently which blocks sideloading applications outside of the official store and make it non-optional, what are we going to do? Use special Chinese Android builds with Ali store (or whatever it's called)?

Boiling the frog slowly and all.

Re: Response to “WireGuard: great protocol, but skip the Mac app”

#117

Post by tasn »

plg- wrote: post #113
tasn wrote: post #44

The iOS and macOS apps have been the biggest point of stress and frustration when building EteSync[1]. The API is buggy as hell and very limited (if at all available) and the review process is arbitrary and can cause updates to be rejected. You can never know if your workarounds will be accepted or rejected. Sometimes they can even get rejected in future app updates. The EteSync experience is subpar on Apple devices,…

> it's beyond me why would anyone willingly use an Apple product Final users don't see this mess.

That's a fair point, I was picturing developers (who are Apple users) in my head when I wrote this.

Re: Response to “WireGuard: great protocol, but skip the Mac app”

#118

Post by sdflhasjd »

rwmj wrote: post #54
wscott wrote: post #47

First off, what a level-headed friendly response from a developer who is clearly frustrated by Apple's bugs and policies. As someone who has had to support commercial software this is not easy to do consistently. Second, this has significantly tempered my lusting over the new M1 macs. I think I can be content with my ThinkPad's running Linux.

This worries me for a similar reason - I get requests to port some software I wrote over to the Mac from time to time, and the new M1 Mac Mini is cheap enough that I might have bought one to do this development. But I'm not keen to spend any money or time on an ecosystem which might be closed down in the future.

I fell into the same trap a while back. Bought a mac, fixed some OSS I maintained (and I do note the documentation was quite crap "Well, Apple. I made it... despite your directions"), the next OS X update killed it again, gave up, sold the mac.

Felt like an enourmous waste of money and time.

Re: Response to “WireGuard: great protocol, but skip the Mac app”

#119

Post by Macha »

Signez wrote: post #4

May I suggest to @dang to update the title with something just a little bit more informative without much editorialization, like: WireGuard Developer Response to "Great protocol, skip the Mac app" blogpost

It appears they've gone the opposite direction and removed any reference to the the fact that the author is the wireguard developer.

Re: Response to “WireGuard: great protocol, but skip the Mac app”

#120

Post by enriquto »

sdflhasjd wrote: post #118
rwmj wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This worries me for a similar reason - I get requests to port some software I wrote over to the Mac from time to time, and the new M1 Mac Mini is cheap enough that I might have bought one to do this development. But I'm not keen to spend any money or time on an ecosystem which might be closed down in the future.

I fell into the same trap a while back. Bought a mac, fixed some OSS I maintained (and I do note the documentation was quite crap "Well, Apple. I made it... despite your directions"), the next OS X update killed it again, gave up, sold the mac. Felt like an enourmous waste of money and time.

> Felt like an enourmous waste of money and time.

And it certainly was. But sometimes you have well-appreciated macOS users that you have not yet managed to convert out of it. In that case, instead of throwing away your money you can easily [0] install a Catalina vm inside linux or windows. With a quite small effort, you can readily check that your program compiles and runs on that shitty system.

[0] https://github.com/myspaghetti/macos-virtualbox

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