Mailing List Archive

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~

> 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.

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.

On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 8:17 AM Brian J. Murrell <brian@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 :(


>
> > 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 :)



> 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.
>
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-dev mailing list
> mythtv-dev@mythtv.org
> http://lists.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev
> http://wiki.mythtv.org/Mailing_List_etiquette
> MythTV Forums: https://forum.mythtv.org
>

On Wed, 2020-12-23 at 08:37 -0600, Greg Oliver wrote:
>
> 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.

There is no such cat and mouse game for Android though. So why not
embrace that?

> I was
> thinking of ease of use for others and also the visibility aspect.

Which you would get (although not as much) with F-Droid. One thing to
consider is that nobody is going to casually come across a MythTV
frontend in the Google Play store and install it and then embark on
installing a whole MythTV BE to use it.

Rather, it's existing MythTV BE users that are going to seek out the
Android FE and in their search, the MythTV wiki can introduce them to
F-Droid to obtain it.

> All in
> all I agree, but most here are not FOSS

FOSS was just an aside. The main point was that you don't have to use
the Google Play store. There are alternatives.

Cheers,
b.

On 2020-12-23 7:37 a.m., Greg Oliver wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 8:17 AM Brian J. Murrell <brian@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.
_______________________________________________
mythtv-dev mailing list
mythtv-dev@mythtv.org
http://lists.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev
http://wiki.mythtv.org/Mailing_List_etiquette
MythTV Forums: https://forum.mythtv.org

On 12/23/20 11:49 AM, Curtis Gedak wrote:
> On 2020-12-23 7:37 a.m., Greg Oliver wrote:
>> On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 8:17 AM Brian J. Murrell <brian@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
I have not had a problem with this, I update the "target api" for
leanfront when a new one is available. The minimum api version is more
critical and that stays at 21 or so. The same could be done with
mythfrontend.
> 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
>
The repetitive content policy seems to mean they arbitrarily remove any
app they feel like removing. If I look for almost anything on google
play there are dozens of applications that provide it.
>>>> 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.

I am not worried about the cost of the app store, rather about other issues.

I looked at using the play store and it did not look good. There are
many requirements for the play store that the application must conform
to. Apart from this there are special requirements for TV apps. Also,
unlike phone apps, TV apps have to get "approved" by Google.

https://developer.android.com/distribute/best-practices/launch/distribute-tv

Google will not be able to "review" the application unless they have
mythbackend running, so I don't know how the review will go.

leanfront may be OK but mythfrontend has other problems. You need to
have multiple versions available and must not upgrade to a version
higher than the mythbackend version. So we would have to have separate
apps in the store for mythfrontend-30, mythfrontend-31, mythfrontend-32,
etc. These will surely be taken down as "repetitive content".

f-droid - I am not sure if it works with Android-TV. Has anybody tried that?

Then there is the amazon play store for fire sticks and fire tv - that
has its own set of requirements that you can spend a week just reading

https://developer.amazon.com/apps-and-games/app-submission

Another problem is how to manage the app signing. Only I have the
current signing certificate. Should I give it to all the developers? At
the moment I am the only one deploying apks.

Google distributes either apks or bundles. Should I use a bundle?

Google has an option to apply their own signing key to my apps. That
would be a problem since all existing users would have to uninstall and
reinstall and I could not give people preview copies to test bug fixes.
If I choose not to use google's signing key what are the consequences?

Peter
_______________________________________________
mythtv-dev mailing list
mythtv-dev@mythtv.org
http://lists.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev
http://wiki.mythtv.org/Mailing_List_etiquette
MythTV Forums: https://forum.mythtv.org

On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 1:45 PM Greg Oliver <oliver.greg@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.

- 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.
. 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).
_______________________________________________
mythtv-dev mailing list
mythtv-dev@mythtv.org
http://lists.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev
http://wiki.mythtv.org/Mailing_List_etiquette
MythTV Forums: https://forum.mythtv.org

On 2020-12-23 10:34 a.m., Peter Bennett wrote:
>
>> On 12/23/20 11:49 AM, Curtis Gedak wrote:
>>
>> 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
>>
> I have not had a problem with this, I update the "target api" for
> leanfront when a new one is available. The minimum api version is more
> critical and that stays at 21 or so. The same could be done with
> mythfrontend.


Thanks Peter for the correction. I meant the minSdkVersion but had
provided a link for the targetSdkVersion. My bad.

Personally I like to have total control over the SDK versions. I use a
old Motorla Moto G (2nd Generation 2014) with Android 4.4.4 KitKat (API
19). If I increased the minSDKVersion to 21 as Google insists, then I
could not use my own app with this phone. Admittedly this is a pet
peeve of mine as I hate planned obsolescence and the waste it creates. :-)

Curtis



_______________________________________________
mythtv-dev mailing list
mythtv-dev@mythtv.org
http://lists.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev
http://wiki.mythtv.org/Mailing_List_etiquette
MythTV Forums: https://forum.mythtv.org

On 12/23/20 12:45 PM, Gary Buhrmaster wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 23, 2020 at 1:45 PM Greg Oliver <oliver.greg@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).
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-dev mailing list
> mythtv-dev@mythtv.org
> http://lists.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev
> http://wiki.mythtv.org/Mailing_List_etiquette
> MythTV Forums: https://forum.mythtv.org
_______________________________________________
mythtv-dev mailing list
mythtv-dev@mythtv.org
http://lists.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev
http://wiki.mythtv.org/Mailing_List_etiquette
MythTV Forums: https://forum.mythtv.org

On 2020-12-23 10:34 a.m., Peter Bennett wrote:
>
> f-droid - I am not sure if it works with Android-TV. Has anybody tried
> that?


I do not have experience with Android-TV apps. I do know that all apps
in the F-Droid app store must be built completely from source code and
must not contain any binary blobs.

With MythTV being somewhat more complex to install and configure than an
average app, I think most MythTV users are fairly savvy. Such users
should be able to figure out how to sideload an APK onto an Android
device. Hence little need for an app store presence.

Thanks again Peter for providing the MythTV APKs, and to all the
developers who make the MythTV software such a great TV recording and
viewing experience.

Curtis
_______________________________________________
mythtv-dev mailing list
mythtv-dev@mythtv.org
http://lists.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-dev
http://wiki.mythtv.org/Mailing_List_etiquette
MythTV Forums: https://forum.mythtv.org

Curtis Gedak wrote on 24/12/20 2:49 am:
> [snip]
> I have personal experience (~5 years) with the Play store and a Free
> Software app and it is not good.
>
> [...]
>
> 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/

[...]

I've built a few MythTV systems for myself and others, but I'm not a
developer. But regardless, this list has produced another benefit: I've
finally got around to installing F-Droid, and now after installing
Curtis's SolitaireCG I have an ad-free game!

Thanks to the MythTV developers for MythTV and to Curtis for his game.

--

Bob Long