[mythtv] Google Play Store Dev fees

Peter Bennett pb.mythtv at gmail.com
Wed Dec 23 18:02:24 UTC 2020


On 12/23/20 12:45 PM, Gary Buhrmaster wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 1:45 PM Greg Oliver <oliver.greg at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Just throwing it out there ....
> As I recall, Google charges a modest one time fee
> ($25?) so I suspect that is not really a hinderance
> (Apple, on the other hand, has a recurring fee of
> $99?/yr which may be more onerous for casual
> developers).
>
> The issue(s) that I recall being mentioned in the past were:
>
>    - There is no (easy) way to version an app, you just
>       get the latest, but the latest mfe would presumably only
>       be the master branch (or last released?).
>         . you could create a mfe30, mfe31, mfe32 app, but many
>           users would not know which they need, and if they
>           upgrade their BE they would have to remove the old
>           and install the new, so users may still be in a bind, and
>           as I recall Google strongly discourages app versioning
>           like that.
>         . Creating a mfe that is version agnostic *might* be
>           technically possible (build/bundle every version and
>           internally branch to the correct variant), but would
>           be a lot of (unfunded) work.
It is already 70 MB form just one version ...
>    - The various apps (may) contain patented technologies,
>       and some of the IP owners are rather intense regarding
>       their IP protections.  Regardless of what you think
>       about such IP, it is the law of the land for a number
>       of the core developers.
>         . Some IP owners simply issue removals
>           (regularly scanning the appstore for violations),
>         . Some IP owners have been rumored to go
>           after license fees for distributing a binary
>           with their IP included (and a free app that
>           loses money with each download tends not
>           to be of interest to most).
>         . One could remove all the IP licensed tech, and
>           while I do not know how much the removal of all
>           the IP licensed tech would do to mfe/leanfront
>           I suspect that it would not be a fully usable app.

mythfrontend has a full build of ffmpeg, which likely is a problem here.

leanfront has ffmpeg only for decoding of audio that is not supported in 
hardware. All video decoding and most audio decoding is done in hardware 
or in Android built in code. A version of leanfront that excludes ffmpeg 
audio decoding would be usable for most playback if you have a TV that 
supports AC3 (I think most do).  It would not support speedup/slowdown 
for videos using AC3 or other surround sound formats.

>         . Of course, the apps could use the licensed
>           tech and then charge a modest fee, but
>           you might be amazed at how much those
>           licenses add up to, and in any case, unless
>           you are a large large firm you likely will
>           find it nigh impossible to obtain the license
>           and get it reviewed by all the appropriate
>           lawyers at an effort (and cost) level you would
>           find acceptable.  I will note that the first step
>           would to be engage an IP lawyer to review
>           all possible IP claims (and it is not necessarily
>           just the codecs, which are bad enough).
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