[mythtv] Google Play Store Dev fees

[Curtis Gedak]

On 2020-12-23 7:37 a.m., Greg Oliver wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 8:17 AM Brian J. Murrell <brian at interlinx.bc.ca>
> wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, 2020-12-23 at 07:45 -0600, Greg Oliver wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>
>> Hi.
>>
>>> I would be willing to pay the Google fees for the developer account,
>>> etc if
>>> you are interested in publishing the MythFrontend and MythLeanFront
>>> apps on
>>> the Play Store.
>>
>> Paying fees to give away FOSS apps.  ~sigh~
> 
> 
> I agree there, but the ecosystem is the ecosystem too.  The company I work
> for is the same way, but eventually, we had to give in to the dark side to
> make users happy :(


I have personal experience (~5 years) with the Play store and a Free
Software app and it is not good.

To be published on the Play store apps are forced to target Google's
chosen minimum API [1] such that support for older devices / Android
versions must be dropped.  This minimum API is constantly increased.

[1]
https://developer.android.com/distribute/best-practices/develop/target-sdk

This artificial restriction does not happen with the Free Software
F-Droid app store.  There I am able to choose which devices I support.
For SolitaireCG [2] I support all the way back to API 4 (Android 1.6 Donut).

[2] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.sourceforge.solitaire_cg/

Another bad experience is that Google can at any time decide to suspend
an app with little to no reason and leave the developer with virtually
no recourse.  This happened late last year for SolitaireCG [3].  I don't
know for a fact, but it seems the Play store favours paid apps or apps
with advertising so that the big tech company makes money.

[3] https://solitairecg.sourceforge.io/news.php?item=24


>>> It is not any big deal to sideload them, but as their popularity
>>> seems to
>>> be increasing (because they kick ass), it would be easier :)
>>>
>>> I have 10s of devices I load them on at various places, so the
>>> investment
>>> would be small for me.
>>
>> You could also look into alternate app stores if you want the
>> convenience of being able to install from an app store.
>>
> 
> (prior to Android hat on here)
> 
> The original iPhone 3rd party repos were fun to play with and all, but it
> just becomes a game of cat and mouse in the long run.  Like I said, I
> really do not care because I have network adb enabled on them all and it is
> actually faster to sideload them all with a single command, but I was
> thinking of ease of use for others and also the visibility aspect.  All in
> all I agree, but most here are not FOSS purists as they run the nVidia
> driver anyway :)


I also have experience with iOS.  The iPhone app store is a completely
different thing from the Play store.  With Android one has the option of
"installing from unknown sources" without having to "root" the device.
With iPhones one must perform a "jailbreak" which involves finding and
exploiting a security hole in the OS.  Hence it is within the ability of
a normal Android user to install apps from other sources. I do not think
the same can be said of Apple's iOS.


Based on my experience I'd say the efforts of Free Software developers
are much better spent working on their passions rather than trying to
jump through the hoops of commercial app store submissions.


>> F-Droid (https://f-droid.org/en/) is one such store that I install apps
>> from that are not on the Google Play store.  It's an open source app
>> store for open source projects.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> b.