Seconded here. So far only used ready made sets, especially the fantastic CCNA one from Jeremy's IT Labs.
But I guess that if I fix few more errors, I'll break into creating my own cards.
I found that creating and adding to my own decks is the best way to learn. It's also a lot of fun creating the cards/notes structure, with some cards being created conditionally upon state of certain fields in the note, etc. It's a bit like creating a database schema.
I made hundreds of cards to get me through the ACR core exam, and I'll be teaching my kids to make cards when it's time for them to do intensive memorization. Paper is just fine, but I think this is a situation where digital is better.
> Play billing "must not be used in cases where payments include … tax exempt donations"
> Note: 501(c)(6) is a tax-exempt status; donations are not tax-deductible for the donor. Google's communications explicitly state "tax-exempt".
Isn't it pretty obvious that the problem is the donations aren't tax-exempt, despite the organization being tax-exempt?
Logically, the payment processor (who deals with sales taxes rather than income taxes) should worry about the taxability of the transaction rather than the tax status of the recipient, right?
> Specifically, your app allows users to contribute donations to an organization that is not tax-exempt.
So whoever is writing their email is mixing these two up, but you're reading the policy itself and it is fairly clear-cut what it means for you, right?
Their emails are confusing, but they came after the alleged violation, not what you were going based off at the time of the alleged violation. If you ignore them momentarily (surely you understand they probably aren't as well-scrutinized by lawyers, which would explain why they appear to mistakenly refer to the tax status of the recipient rather than that of the donation), is anything else actually confusing or inconsistent? Their policies, the relevant laws, and what common sense would have you expect - they seem pretty cut and dried. Are they inconsistent with anything other than their emails, which came after the fact?
From another angle: why/how do you feel the tax-exempt-mess of the recipient itself could sensibly be the determining factor here, rather than the taxability of the transaction itself? Is there any law or precedent or anything outside their emails that would suggests a payment processor should look at the tax status of the recipient rather than that of a transaction?
I don't know every jurisdiction, but that's not the only relevant factor. If they are tax-deductible, they still introduce the need for paperwork etc. for the payment processor to let the payer deduct it from their own income.
Though I think you can just read the policy and take it at face value and not even have to know any of this beforehand.
But the complaint isn't that Google won't process the payment. It's that they won't allow them to link to an OpenCollective donation page, and presumably OpenCollective would handle anything like that.
That’s not true. If a donation is tax deductible that’s just between the IRS, the recipient and the donor. The payment processor, banks, etc don’t do anything special.
So I'm only a layperson and don't know what is strictly legally required, but my understanding (based on reading/third-hand information) is that payment processors do in practice end up with more work to do for this, whatever the reason. Quoting from [1]:
> Nonprofits have strict tax regulations when accepting donations. The more a payment processing system can assist with these regulations, the better for you and your donors. For instance, donors need to receive specific documentation for tax-deductible contributions, such as donation receipts. Additionally, different types of donations may involve different tax considerations for the donor and the organization. Nonprofits also have to consider any state and federal regulations regarding their charitable solicitation and fundraising activities, which may vary depending on location and activities.
And there's of course also exemption from sales tax which they have to handle too.
Sure, but that’s still a problem of their own making. These people don’t want to use them to process the payment. They just want to link to their own web page.
> the payment processor (who deals with sales taxes rather than income taxes) should worry about the taxability of the transaction rather than the tax status of the recipient
A donation is not a sale of a good or service. This is not a question of sales tax collection.
They don’t have to exempt anything. Just let them have a link to the donate page like they always have. Which is also how nearly every donation works in the US.
It's a link to a page where you can donate. Google is not involved in the transaction. Google's rules say you can link out for donations. Google is then telling them they can't link out for donations.
The policy is far from clear cut, and even having read your comments I am still not sure what you think it's trying to say. The policy suggests that an app may lead users to another payment method where the payment is a "tax exempt donation". What tax, specifically, are you suggesting a donation to OSC is not exempt from? You mention sales tax, is it the case that donations are not exempt from (ie, are subject to) sales tax?
Or are you saying the key point is that the donation not tax-deductible for the donor, which is a different thing to being tax exempt (and does not have anything to do with the "taxability of the transaction")?
The mere fact that they have to avoid determining sales tax (unlike their typical transactions) is clearly extra complication for them. So you can understand that sales tax being 0% (thus "not taxable") can make things harder, not easier.
Having to deal with bookkeeping or paperwork for tax deductions could also make things harder.
In any case, whether you think these are easier or harder, and regardless of which cases should be supported from a business perspective, their policy page (at least the one that I'm reading) very clearly says you can't use their system for such donations.
If you can't use their systems for a donation with a sales tax rate of 0%, then per the policy that means you can route users to alternative payment methods for those transactions. So by your reasoning, if donations to OSC are not subject to sales tax, then what the app is doing should be okay.
(As an aside, I have no idea if donations to OSC are subject to sales tax, but I would be surprised if they were given there is no sale or supply happening, and no one here seems to have suggested they are.)
> In any case, whether you think these are easier or harder, and regardless of which cases should be supported from a business perspective, their policy page (at least the one that I'm reading) very clearly says you can't use their system for such donations.
I disagree, because it uses the loose term "tax exempt donations", and nobody, it seems, can agree on whether that means exempt from income tax (ie, recipient does not need to pay income tax on it), exempt from sales tax, or deductible for income tax purposes (personally I think this is likely what it is intended to capture, and the only real basis on which to distinguish between 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(6) organisations, but in fact is the least supported by a literal reading).
And they were not right? The issue here is that Google doesn't define tax-exempt properly, but does tell you to not use play. And then throws a fitty when you do that and they decided it's not the right kind of tax exempt?
At least,that is how i read it.
And then the way google deals with these cases is the real problem: no communication, no recourse, just spam HN and pray.
And I am 99.99% certain they don't want such transactions for some other reason, perhaps they can't make as much money from them orso
> So whoever is writing their email is mixing these two up, but you're reading the policy itself and it is fairly clear-cut what it means for you, right?
This (rhetorical?) question seems to suggest that you have a level of understanding or have done the analysis required to come to such a meaning. It seems to me that it would be most beneficial if you simply shared that analysis.
To me, seeing this here for the first time, it is not at all obvious what the terms mean for someone seeking a donation, because of the past behavioral detail of WireGuard going through something similar. The terms you quote seem to me to state that since there is a tax exempt donation involved, the prohibition on routing to a non-Google Play billing workflow should not be in effect.
So we don't devolve into semantics, I am just going to use the term "special tax status" to denote anything thab the regular payment flow. I'm doing that on purpose, because part of the argument is that tax exempt and tax deductible are different things. Your argument, as far as I understand, does not actually rely on this distinction. It just comments on it.
I read your comments and what I ended up inferring was that it relies on a few premises:
1. Google states in their policy that their billing platform cannot be used for [special tax status].
2. Google would be presented with an undue burden if they had to alter their processes to process donations with [special tax status], which may potentially involv extensive manual review manually.
3. Therefore, despite the wording, the rules and undue burden are clear that you cannot use Google Play billing for [special tax status].
I've read the rest of your comments
downthread and I think that I'm representing your position accurately. Again, if I'm not, I legitimately want corrections.
The issue with going from the premise to the conclusion is that if you look at their actual payment flow to the Open Collective it seems to be just a webview to their donation page. I mean, it doesn't look like Google's payment flow at all and I'm pretty sure Google doesn't accept ACH payments directly.
If Google wants to avoid extra work, they literally just can do nothing about it and the donations on that page will go to a tax exempt organization.
I'm going to take a look at the rules right now and either update this comment or reply to it. (Sorry, I figured I would post it because I'm not sure when I would be able to post another.)
P.S. I probably should have out of this to the top, but I do want to mention that several people pointed this out in the comments but I wanted to be a bit more specific about the payment flow, and what we're actually debating.
This is why software should not be subjected to an "app store" type distribution system, where a monopolist retains absolute control of what software can run on your devices, and can capriciously deny distribution to developers for whatever reason it likes.
To me it's not really the concept of the app store that's dystopian, it's not that different from a deb or rpm repository. What is dystopian is the level of control the OS vendor maintains over the entire ecosystem.
>it's not that different from a deb or rpm repository
The difference is that the default app stores require you to make an account to be able to use them. This would rightfully be considered insane on desktop OSs, yet is considered normal for phones.
You don't need an account to browse the steam store, you need one to verify you're a user before downloading/installing a game, or (obviously) buying a game.
In a perfect world, you wouldn't need an account to buy or download something, either. It's too bad we've somehow normalized this idea that you need an account just to buy something.
It’s not insane because Valve is not the OS provider, and you can install as many “app stores” as you want. Even SteamOS doesn’t lock down the OS so Steam is the only way to install software.
Annoyances like requiring an account become a preference, because you have alternatives.
if you havent been paying attention, google is REEEEALLY into monopolies and fascism. Google literally jumped out of their pants to change the name of lake ontario the second trump said to.
If only PWA were not made invisible by Apple. The install button has been moved voluntarily to the share menu.
The UE should make it mandatory to permit PWA install popups on all platforms.
Such problems wouldn't arise, because this app could be installable as a cached Web app. A native mobile application could be installed only for specific functionalities.
PWAs are not much more than webpages, basically just a separate launcher icon and less browser chrome making it look and feel more native. It's in the user's best interest to use these, since they get the good parts of using an app while avoiding full-featured-app junk like persistent background services that constantly monitor you.
> GitHub Sponsors is another way to raise for an open source organization.
Which they do in fact use, with OSC as a fiscal host. Still doesn’t help here though – Google is unhappy with the nature of transaction (donation that is not tax-exempt in the U.S.), not with the platform on which it occurs.
If they instead made the donations go to e.g. the lead developer, it would probably be allowed (“peer-to-peer payments” can’t use Google Play billing, so the app can “lead users to [another] payment method” [1]). Whether this is a good idea is a whole another question.
A majority of the people that have contributed to Android did not contribute with the understanding that Google would monopolize payments in all apps on the app store.
Every day Google commits to more Evil. How much more Evil can this world take from Google?
Also - all those monopoly-stores need to be broken up. It can not be that these mega-corporations continue to be protected by a selfish US government wanting to install monopolies globally.
> Because we are a 501(c)(6), OSC is not a registered 501(c)(3) charity; donations to hosted member projects are not tax-deductible. This is consistent with IRS guidelines — open source donations aren't automatically classified as charitable simply because they are FOSS.
> If your project has a clear charitable purpose, a 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor may be a good fit.
IANAL, but it seems like the wording in the public-facing version of the policy is a little muddy. As far as I'm aware, "tax exempt donation" not a thing that actually exists in US tax law. It seems to be a conflation of "tax deductible donation" and "tax exempt organization".
Knowing how big corporations do things, that document was likely written by someone who doesn't fully understand the jargon or even how pedantic you have to be about words when dealing with legal concepts, who didn't set the policy themself, and who is not responsible for enforcing the policy. So we should take its specific choice of words with a grain of salt.
Shit like this is yet another reason why we don't have apps in the app store. In app purchases are a non-starter for us.
As I understand it, there are ways to work around accepting payments or donations outside of the app stores.
It adds one more thing to have to do and explain to users. And even with that piece taken care of, we would need to be constantly vigilant about changes in Apple or Google policies that might eject our app from the storefront.
Apps need to exit the Play Store. I have a whole slew of apps which haven't been updated for a while now because Aurora Store isn't working because of whatever Google of doing. Meanwhile the ones installed via FDroid and other means are perfectly up to date. It's a crappy state of affairs as Google continues to close the boiling Android frog.
On my end the experience was more pleasant on f-droid than on Google. On f-droid I had to manually push some things, in repositories. That I solved in a week or so.
On Google end I had to verify my account. Which was not easy feat.
- had to provide my ID several times, because it got rejected multiple times
- I uploaded driving license
- the verification process was stuck
- only after help ticket google employee pushed it forward
- I had to provide many more details, also had to use banking to pay substantial amount of money
- I currently trying to create app, but it requires 14 testers, and it can still be rejected, if their involvement was too poor
I am wondering what more things Google will invent to make my life worse.
From a user perspective I think F-Droid is really good too, mainly because it only allows FOSS apps by default, which cuts out a lot of the BS you see in Play Store apps.
You can go download a random, no-name app from F-Droid and be very confident it does what it says on the tin and won't be riddled with ads or spam you with notifications.
Thats the only reason for at least me to use f droid and I have for the last decade I think.
It "just works".
As opposed to play store apps requiring "play store services" meaning having to sign into play store. It refuses to do so on a FOSS principle so I am literally cut off from a lot of apps.
Aurora store helps but apps that "require play store services" don't work.
> "play store services" meaning having to sign into play store
Not necessarily. Most apps that require Play Services should work fine even if you’re not logged into Google. You do, however, have to have the “gapps” installed. (Some apps would also actually check whether you’ve installed them from the Google Play store and not, say, Aurora, but from my experience most don’t bother.)
Also, perhaps look into microG? It reimplements the Play Services APIs, but is FOSS and only connects to Google servers when it’s necessary for some functionality (e.g. if you enable push notifications): https://microg.org/
I’m using microG without signing in. Could you tell me a bit about what apps you’re using that you’re having trouble with?
A good way to sidestep all those issues is getting your “everyday” apps from F-Droid :-) I’m only using Aurora Store for things like banking, taxi, or food delivery apps, and those are usually working great. Some banks are more trigger happy (shame on you, Revolut) while others seem to be okay. I really only miss Google Wallet.
I am a little wary how many of the newer apps on F-Droid seem fully vibe-coded. there's only so many 'brain training' games and 'fully offline notes apps' that one really needs
I wish there was a 'ranking' feature that periodically (maybe daily?) pulled down star/contributor numbers so you could at least look at projects that are more likely to receive continuing support and have basic hygiene like Dependabot alerts
that said, migrating off so many of the Google-native or phone manufacturer apps has been such a liberatory feeling. I do some community organizing in my free-time and am a huge FOSS evangelist in those spaces. there's so many similar values, namely anti-surveillance, and but for resistance to change and preference for hyperpalatable UX, it's such a natural fit
On the user side my experience with F-Droid is auto updates dont work and I constantly get a "repository not reachable" f-droid error every now and then popping up on my phone (that little small middle-of-screen toast) when im doing something else completely unrelated. Might be a regional thing.
I get the F-Droid toasts once every few weeks or so. To me, it's worth it. Finding a tolerable weather app on the Play Store is impossible nowadays. Finding one on F-Droid is easy.
F-Droid is a nerd solution and will be used by 0.00001% of the total market. There are more people that will use Linux on desktop than will use F-Droid.
We need governments to mandate both Apple and Google to allow web installs of apps. No requirement for Apple/Google pay, Apple/Google login, or Apple/Google services.
Total freedom for users, for developers, and for competitors.
This duopoly has fucked over America and the EU by training us to think only these two companies have the right to decide what gets to be on your phone that you pay for.
They've created a moat so strong that it's impossible to compete with Android/iPhone, so the market cannot even have healthy competition.
F-Droid is not the answer. Regulation is.
And I'll have none of this fangirl/fanboy "but my grandma will fall for scams" nonsense.
Google and Amazon and all the platforms have scammy ads on their platforms. Nobody's doing anything about that.
Technology can be sandboxed, permissioned, signed, fingerprinted, attested, scanned, and blacklisted. It's easy to make this safe in the year of our lord 2026. Don't pretend we don't have a million ways to make this safe for your meemaw. She's more likely to fall down the stairs or get a scam call.
Regulate Google. Regulate Apple. Make our phones free.
Actions speak louder than words, and there has been no real action for my entire gray-haired life. Politicians can talk all they want about anti-trust reforms, but both parties equally have lots of members with vested interests in these cartels and who profit from the status quo. I think that ultimately overrides the will of the people more often than not.
She didn't "take too long," she did all she could as long as she could, and is still doing it. The problem is that she was opposed by both political parties and the administration, for whom she was a token to hand to the Bernie and AOC people so they could sell out without being called sellouts.
If Biden had promoted Khan not only would she have had vastly more success, but he would have won the election - demented or not. Instead, if you listened to his press conferences, you would have no idea that she existed. He did not support her. He was a tool for financial scammers his entire career. His tiny little state was to domestic financial scams as Ireland is to worldwide tax dodging.
> Both the Democratic and Republican parties have lots of members who are fed up with big tech.
Few members, with no power. All of the leadership is on the big tech payroll. It's the population which hates big tech, and their opinions don't matter.
The public are also easily movable over time and under great pressure. The public have become aggressively pro-Big Pharma and Free Trade globalists in a single generation. Libs have become militantly pro-FBI and CIA anti-Soviet warriors. They literally revived the 50's anti-Commie language to describe everything they didn't like, and worship The Lincoln Project, David Frum, and even goddamn Bill Kristol which I never thought would work. It's literally the same generation that reviled them and anyone who would tolerate them just 20 years ago.
They didn't even have to die for success of the submissiveness revolution. They just had to keep watching, and consuming. And you had to threaten their jobs, all the time.
Having a theory of power that doesn't unrealistically imagine a control over government which one demonstrably doesn't have is not "defeatism." Limiting yourself to only one impossible way of doing things is more insidious than learned helplessness, because they can give you a dramatically scripted mini-game to fool yourself into thinking that you're progressing. See slacktivism.
The trouble with controlling the government is that nobody actually does. Nobody will ever get it to do everything they want, or everything it "should", or anything like that. It's a giant uncoordinated bureaucracy full of inefficiency and perverse incentives. Relying only on the government is a time-honored way to die with regrets.
This is not the same as being unable to affect it at all. It can very easily go from being hot garbage to being flaming toxic waste in a tornado when the only people who show up are the ones trying to steal from everyone else.
On Yputube just now I got hit with an ad whose forst 5 u skippable seconds were an AI person saying "Did you know the cure for dimentia is in the Bible!?!?" - considering who that ad is targetting, Google can F off with any stance about protecting people from scams.
That's good, but don't forget that the point is that Google's pearl clutching about security doesn't apply when they are making money. They'll sell you straight to scammers if it makes them money.
> Technology can be sandboxed, permissioned, signed, fingerprinted, attested, scanned, and blacklisted.
Many of the thing you're listing are the exact things the platforms would have to be banned from doing by the regulation you're proposing because they're the mechanisms used to exclude competitors.
If you put all apps in a sandbox then they can't perform certain operations (e.g. install other apps) which inherently means they can't compete in the market for doing those things. If apps have to be signed by the platform then the signing fee becomes the vig they charge to everyone even if they're using a competing store, and both that and scanning/fingerprinting provide a mechanism to revoke competing apps under arbitrary pretexts and otherwise grief their developers and users.
Attestation is the thing you would have to ban the most because it's not just subject to abuse, its very mechanism of operation is to prevent existing apps that use it from running on a competing new system at the point in time when the new system has too few users for all the apps to explicitly add support for it, thereby preventing the competitor from getting enough users for that to ever happen.
But attestation doesn't prevent grandma from getting scammed anyway. When the scammer calls pretending to be the grandchild who needs money for an emergency, they use the official signed bank app on the attestation-passing device to transfer money to the scammer. When the scammer is using a fake bank app to steal the user's credentials, the fake app doesn't require attestation.
The actual problem here is that you want to have someone vetting apps for grandma, but you don't want the platforms to be able to insist it be them rather than F-Droid or Aurora etc. Which the platforms will try to claim is chicken and egg (how do you know you can trust F-Droid?) while hoping you don't notice that they don't actually get you out of it -- how do you know you can trust Google?
> Many of the things you're listing are the exact things the platforms would have to be banned from doing by the regulation you're proposing because they're the mechanisms used to exclude competitors.
And they should still be banned from forcing apps to do it under their arbitrary judgements in order to participate on their platform. That isn't the same thing as preventing them from doing it. Some people honestly think they love walled gardens (they don't), but some people honestly need walled gardens. There should even be competing walled gardens. Let me install the best kids app store for my kids, and the best grandmas app store for my grandma.
I'm also not sure that attestation should be banned at the app store or platform level; it's a service. I'd ban it at the bank and merchant level. Attestation should be a tool for the user of the device (just like everything else on the phone they own.) They should be able to get it to attest to whatever they want to get it to attest to - if I'm a company and I issue my employees phones, I might want to make sure those phones haven't been tampered with. If I'm a parent and I issue my children phones, I might want to make sure those phones haven't been tampered with. The problem comes when arbitrary people are using it to make sure that the user hasn't tampered with their own phone since it came from some official list of blessed companies.
Let me install the best kids app store for my kids, and the best grandmas app store for my grandma. Let me be able to use attestation to make sure their phones haven't been altered since the last time I checked.
> If apps have to be signed by the platform
I'd like to get back to apps being signed by upstream, so we know they actually come from the author. I couldn't care less if the platform offers a service which verifies those signatures, and if almost everyone uses that service. That's just DNS. If your platforms service becomes hostile, there will be cheap/free competitors, just like DNS.
Just agreeing loudly. But the problem with F-Droid is that it is to be a store that has been blessed by Google in order to avoid legal questions. I know that this is not their fault, and that they hate it. I exclusively use F-Droid and don't even have a Google Play account, but if they started making decisions that I couldn't stand (they haven't, ever) I wouldn't have any alternative.
I remember the bullshit settlement of Microsoft antitrust is that they had to place a modal popup do select a default browser (that I never saw, once, in any context.) No reason why the platform's store can't be demoted to one of a number of stores other than that it is a profit spinner.
> And they should still be banned from forcing apps to do it under their arbitrary judgements in order to participate on their platform. That isn't the same thing as preventing them from doing it.
If they do it and it's enabled by default then they still get to grief their competitors because by default anyone who tries to use the competitor gets a big scary red box that deters adoption and has to jump through a bunch of hoops to get past it. It also thwarts adoption of competing signing alternatives because >90% of people will use whatever the default is even if the alternatives are at least as good.
> some people honestly need walled gardens
"Walled garden" is an Orwellian term. It's meant to imply that someone is curating what's inside it and not letting in things you don't want, and that is indeed a useful thing. But then people use the same term to mean a "garden" that locks you inside of it rather than locking bad things out. The only people who need that are small children and adults with mental illnesses severe enough to justify them having a guardian assigned to make their decisions for them.
> I'm also not sure that attestation should be banned at the app store or platform level; it's a service.
It isn't a service at all. The device contains hardware to sign the state of the device using a protected private key. Solving the problem is very simple -- you ban the device from coming with any private key already installed that the user can't freely extract. Then the root of the chain of trust is the customer's public key, not the vendor's, and whether a device is authorized comes down to whether the user's public key is authorized rather than the vendor's, which in turn makes the system vendor-agnostic.
> That's just DNS. If your platforms service becomes hostile, there will be cheap/free competitors, just like DNS.
DNS is actually a pretty terrible model because the "competition" is a fraud. There are registrars and registries and the registrars compete with each other but the registry still sets the price the registrars pay and the registries have a monopoly over every name in that TLD, so the competition can't actually get you a lower price than the monopoly registry itself sets. And the registries only compete with each other to the extent that you think that example.dental is valid substitute for example.football (no, sorry, those are both the same registry anyway) and to the extent that example.co.uk is a domain you could get instead of example.com rather than needing both. Meanwhile ICANN charges an extortionate amount to anyone who wants to become a registry and the entire system is set up to encourage squatting, to the point that the registries are now doing it themselves rather than making any attempt to impede it.
In general if you want something to work well you need to make it a protocol rather than a service. As soon as you allow a central chokepoint to exist you'll have a troll jumping out from under the bridge and trying to collect tolls.
>Corporation like Google should have been fined to the edge of bankruptcy for such predatory behaviour.
Google has an alternative at least (can download other app stores, apks, and have been able to for 15 years), I have no idea how Apple has been allowed to get away with what they do.
Better framing in their lawsuits- being a ‘market’ is less a thing in a monoculture- i.e. the market for Apple phones vs the market for all Android phones from a variety of makers.
Also in the worldwide market it most definitely isn’t a monopoly in phones at all- which is exactly why the EU had to reform their laws (DMA ect)to get regulatory powers over them.
"It's not a monopoly" is exactly the framing. Antitrust isn't inherently concerned with monopolies, it's concerned with market power. It's just that a monopolist has no room to move in claiming that they don't have market power.
They also play this trick where they pretend the only market is "phones" and ignore all of the complementary markets they're tying together with their phones, like app distribution and browser engines etc., since the market definitions for those shouldn't be the same as it is for "phones" when an app store that can be used on Google and Samsung phones can't be used (and therefore doesn't compete) on Apple phones and vice versa.
I never understood the argument that Apple's hostility to developers was unfair. The business proposition is simple:
"Buy our overpriced hardware with our famously inflexible and invasive software and sign this massive, legally-binding contract agreeing that you understand all of the above to extract further value out of the Apple ecosystem."
The "App Store" is just a natural extension of the club. As far as I'm concerned, they can gatekeep and sloppify as much as they want. Apple users agree to this.
I've never felt slighted that I couldn't hack apart my iPad - though I will absolutely do it once somebody cracks the code and gets a proper Linux kernel running.
We Americans collectively voted for this for decades. Virtually everyone who has cast a ballot for a national race has voted for this state of affairs.
Especially in the software community, overwhelmingly self-described libertarian, all voted for this.
It takes a big government to stop this from happening. (It also takes a big government to stop structural racism, etc., which means higher taxes, which means there's no such thing as a fiscal conservative who is also socially liberal. But I digress.)
Of the last 10 Presidential terms spanning 40 years, Republicans have held the office for 5 and Democrats for 5. Each party has likewise held around half the seats in the House and Senate. This has nothing to do with the voters, it's the structural outcome of a FPTP voting system. You get two parties and they each get around half the votes/seats.
The US federal government has also played a major role in causing this by passing laws like DMCA 1201 and the CFAA which incumbents use to threaten competitors who attempt adversarial interoperability.
Moreover, the DoJ budget is ~$33B whereas e.g. the military budget is ~$1T, so arguing that the only way to allocate more resources to antitrust enforcement or similar is to raise taxes would imply that all of the existing spending is critically necessary and Congress never e.g. buys tanks the Army doesn't want or otherwise poorly allocates existing funds.
The US Government spends a preposterous amount of money, and the number only ever goes up. It doesn't need to be bigger, it needs to be less inefficient.
This just should not be the top comment here. HN being HN, it's way, way too bent out of shape about the company name attached to the app store and not the minutiae of tax policy, which is what this is really about.
The app in question declares itself this way: AnkiDroid is a free, open-source flashcard app for Android with over 10 million installs, used worldwide for various purposes, primarily in medical education and language learning.
But it's registered as a 501(c)(6) non-profit, which is a designation for a "business league or industry association". This is what you use if you're a Chamber of Commerce, not a flash card app!
Obviously we're all reading this expecting that Anki is a 501(c)(3) charity, like most open source organizations, and it's just not. And the distinction is definitely impactful for tax purposes, something a payment processor is going to care about. Both organizations are exempt from tax themselves, but charitable donations are also deductable, and Anki isn't a charity. Likely Google isn't set up to record the distinction in an auditable way.
The bottom line is that Anki's lawyers messed up. Or plausibly are running some kind of scam (e.g. they take the "donations" and then hand them over to a for-profit "member" company). They need to fix their registration if they want to take money from people, this isn't how you do it and this is surely not the only problem they'll have. Seriously, my Fraud Meter is dinging at about 19.6% here...
> The bottom line is that Anki's lawyers messed up.
Anki and Ankidroid are not the same entity and they have different owners, if you want to call it that.
Anki is owned by Nicholas Flint, a physician who sells med school-related decks online under the name AnKing, which controls Ankihub, which now controls Anki after the original founder (Damien Elmes) gave them control about six months ago.
Ankidroid is a non-profit project that arose when there was only an iPhone mobile version of Anki. Completely unrelated to Anki except that it was blessed by the original creator of Anki.
It's also just some nerd programmers who ported Anki to run on Android. It's not some org with a revenue stream and attorneys.
> Obviously we're all reading this expecting that Anki is a 501(c)(3) charity
No, no one is reading it thinking that Anki is a charity.
Anyway, when you are going to harp on about HN not caring about the minutiae of tax policy, you should make sure you understand that you're talking about two unrelated entities run by different people as if they were the same entity.
So... why is one soliciting donations on behalf of the other?! My Fraud Meter is rising, not falling here.
> It's also just some nerd programmers who ported Anki to run on Android. It's not some org with a revenue stream and attorneys.
"Just Some Nerd Programmers" don't, very obviously, have standing to solicit tax exempt donations. Rising further still...
I think a lot of people here are operating on the assumption that apps have the inherent right to ask for money on a proprietary platform that gives them a monetization path. They don't, on any such platform, and never have. There are specific carveouts allowed by the platform vendors for cases we all agree are valuable, like charitable donations. It's just really clear that Anki is playing games here and frankly I really doubt they qualify.
> So... why is one soliciting donations on behalf of the other?! My Fraud Meter is rising, not falling here.
It's not... AnkiDroid was soliciting donations to AnkiDroid, via OpenCollective, which essentially "owns" them financially, for the purpose of soliciting donations.
This is all explained very clearly in the linked GitHub issue:
> AnkiDroid's donations go to Open Source Collective, a US non-profit which acts as our fiscal host.
> AnkiDroid is the Anki client for Android, developed and maintained by volunteers. Nothing is sold in the app and our Open Collective is the sole source of funding for maintenance and development. AnkiDroid is independent from Anki, AnkiWeb, AnkiMobile, and AnkiHub.
While some confusion is understandable, continuing to press on about your "Fraud Meter" just puts egg on your face when you're misunderstanding things through multiple replies explaining them to you.
> I think a lot of people here are operating on the assumption that apps have the inherent right to ask for money on a proprietary platform that gives them a monetization path.
no one here thinks that there is an "inherent right" to ask for money on a proprietary platform. That's a strawman.
You're also still wrong about the nature of AnkiDroid, and it's making you look silly when you're so confident and rude about it.
> You're also still wrong about the nature of AnkiDroid
So were you though, if you're still standing by "just some nerd programmers". They want to take donations through an outside payment processor, which they simply can't do and you know it. Like, seriously, give me the one sentence summary of what Google is doing wrong here that wouldn't enable essentially arbitrary fraud.
Apps can't put up donation links except in extremely limited circumstances, and this isn't one. And, again, you know it.
Genuinely sorry for being rude, if this seems rude. Doesn't seem rude to me though in context. You were the one who started with the aggressive rhetoric ("harping on", yada yada). We're just flaming, things get hot.
The 501(c)(6) in question is Open Source Collective, which is a “business league or industry association” dedicated to providing financial and administrative assistance to Open Source projects. Anki does not have lawyers, Open Source Collective does.
Since you seem to have done the research, can you link some other iOS or Android apps that have been allowed to solicit donations for the Open Source Collective? Thanks.
90% of my apps (all except for banking, streaming and ev charging app) are installed without play store. Beyond FDroid with custom repos, I actually came to like Komi-Store in combination with obtainium. I really wonder what will happen when Google enforces their own registered developer signatures. I hope there is a crucial mass of apps outside of Play store until then to generate some heard protests.
In Iran, we have a reverse market competition rule that is "instead of the market lowering prices to be competitive with the lowest price, as soon as one actor pushes the prices up, all other actors raise their own prices as fast as humanly possible."
I'm amazed to see the exact playbook be used here. Instead of people opposing Apple's horrible App Store, it seems that every other store is studying their strategies.
I think by the time of Apple's next court case on the App Store, the judge will pay them something back as they'll arrive at the conclusion of Apple doing nothing out of the ordinary.
Yes, throw more government involvement into a fire that was started through the government giving billions of dollars to Google, Microsoft, and apple through tax cuts, and buying services from them instead of their smaller competitors.
Nooo what you are saying communist. I also think so, but each time someone (typically the EU) does something in the direction (e.g. digital market act) the US government, companies and citizens accuse us to be communists, against progress, that we overregulate, that the "free market" regulates by itself, and similar bullshit.
Just because Google built something valuable that doesn't mean the government should take control of it. This line of reasoning also leads to the government taking over YouTube and changing the rules there due to how "important" it is.
The things mega corporations built could be even more valuable (for society) if they didn't intentionally restrict for their own and their shareholders' benefit what you can do with them.
Since they are public companies the shareholder's benefit is to society's benefit.
>"Regulating" also doesn't mean "taking shareholders' benefit
Technically true, but if the regulations are just suggestions then they won't accomplish anything. When people suggest regulation they want to control how these companies are acting, not just sending them a strongly worded letter.
> the shareholder's benefit is to society's benefit
Yes, but there can be other benefits than monetary ones. Besides, I find it rediculous to believe that wealthy people receiving more benefits automatically translates to improvements for the general society.
To add another point: The monetary value these companies create is often only possible because of their monopolistic market distortion. I don't think it can be a net benefit for society when competitors have little to no chance to offer a better product.
> When people suggest regulation they want to control how these companies are acting
That's true. In your original comment you also said "government taking over YouTube" which is why I thought we were talking about complete transfer of control à la planned economy, which is normally not the goal of regulations.
Just chiming in to say that, as a user, F-Droid is so nice and comfortable. Never have I ever had to worry about predatory bs. Thanks to everyone involved :)
I've been more minimal and focused in my technology usage, specifically lucky enough to keep my phones and devices in "no notifications" mode for much of their lifecycle. My desktops and screens also have 0 apps on them ever, if I want to open something I just open a search UI and tap it and open it.
It works great on Mac, and iPhone. I imagine as more people try this sort of user experience, they might wonder like I am "Why use a Google experience device at all?" Most of what I use these days is simple and the extra value-add AI features, attention driven designs that justify new OS and new hardware, and even app stores barely feel necessary. OK some people say "but banking software" but very rarely do I have to use my banking software in a way I couldn't get to in the web browser?
I believe we're very close to having a 80:20 experience designed out in both hardware and software for laptops, phones and smart watches. I can't see these monopolies holding out much longer.
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 71.7 ms ] thread> Note: 501(c)(6) is a tax-exempt status; donations are not tax-deductible for the donor. Google's communications explicitly state "tax-exempt".
Isn't it pretty obvious that the problem is the donations aren't tax-exempt, despite the organization being tax-exempt?
Logically, the payment processor (who deals with sales taxes rather than income taxes) should worry about the taxability of the transaction rather than the tax status of the recipient, right?
> Specifically, your app allows users to contribute donations to an organization that is not tax-exempt.
So whoever is writing their email is mixing these two up, but you're reading the policy itself and it is fairly clear-cut what it means for you, right?
It's not clear given Google's policy wording and replies. We've removed the links, and can move forward once clarification has been provided.
From another angle: why/how do you feel the tax-exempt-mess of the recipient itself could sensibly be the determining factor here, rather than the taxability of the transaction itself? Is there any law or precedent or anything outside their emails that would suggests a payment processor should look at the tax status of the recipient rather than that of a transaction?
I don't know every jurisdiction, but that's not the only relevant factor. If they are tax-deductible, they still introduce the need for paperwork etc. for the payment processor to let the payer deduct it from their own income.
Though I think you can just read the policy and take it at face value and not even have to know any of this beforehand.
> Nonprofits have strict tax regulations when accepting donations. The more a payment processing system can assist with these regulations, the better for you and your donors. For instance, donors need to receive specific documentation for tax-deductible contributions, such as donation receipts. Additionally, different types of donations may involve different tax considerations for the donor and the organization. Nonprofits also have to consider any state and federal regulations regarding their charitable solicitation and fundraising activities, which may vary depending on location and activities.
And there's of course also exemption from sales tax which they have to handle too.
[1] https://www.subsplash.com/blog/nonprofit-payment-processing#...
A donation is not a sale of a good or service. This is not a question of sales tax collection.
Or are you saying the key point is that the donation not tax-deductible for the donor, which is a different thing to being tax exempt (and does not have anything to do with the "taxability of the transaction")?
Having to deal with bookkeeping or paperwork for tax deductions could also make things harder.
In any case, whether you think these are easier or harder, and regardless of which cases should be supported from a business perspective, their policy page (at least the one that I'm reading) very clearly says you can't use their system for such donations.
(As an aside, I have no idea if donations to OSC are subject to sales tax, but I would be surprised if they were given there is no sale or supply happening, and no one here seems to have suggested they are.)
> In any case, whether you think these are easier or harder, and regardless of which cases should be supported from a business perspective, their policy page (at least the one that I'm reading) very clearly says you can't use their system for such donations.
I disagree, because it uses the loose term "tax exempt donations", and nobody, it seems, can agree on whether that means exempt from income tax (ie, recipient does not need to pay income tax on it), exempt from sales tax, or deductible for income tax purposes (personally I think this is likely what it is intended to capture, and the only real basis on which to distinguish between 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(6) organisations, but in fact is the least supported by a literal reading).
At least,that is how i read it.
And then the way google deals with these cases is the real problem: no communication, no recourse, just spam HN and pray.
And I am 99.99% certain they don't want such transactions for some other reason, perhaps they can't make as much money from them orso
This (rhetorical?) question seems to suggest that you have a level of understanding or have done the analysis required to come to such a meaning. It seems to me that it would be most beneficial if you simply shared that analysis.
To me, seeing this here for the first time, it is not at all obvious what the terms mean for someone seeking a donation, because of the past behavioral detail of WireGuard going through something similar. The terms you quote seem to me to state that since there is a tax exempt donation involved, the prohibition on routing to a non-Google Play billing workflow should not be in effect.
I read your comments and what I ended up inferring was that it relies on a few premises:
1. Google states in their policy that their billing platform cannot be used for [special tax status]. 2. Google would be presented with an undue burden if they had to alter their processes to process donations with [special tax status], which may potentially involv extensive manual review manually. 3. Therefore, despite the wording, the rules and undue burden are clear that you cannot use Google Play billing for [special tax status].
I've read the rest of your comments downthread and I think that I'm representing your position accurately. Again, if I'm not, I legitimately want corrections.
The issue with going from the premise to the conclusion is that if you look at their actual payment flow to the Open Collective it seems to be just a webview to their donation page. I mean, it doesn't look like Google's payment flow at all and I'm pretty sure Google doesn't accept ACH payments directly.
If Google wants to avoid extra work, they literally just can do nothing about it and the donations on that page will go to a tax exempt organization.
I'm going to take a look at the rules right now and either update this comment or reply to it. (Sorry, I figured I would post it because I'm not sure when I would be able to post another.)
P.S. I probably should have out of this to the top, but I do want to mention that several people pointed this out in the comments but I wanted to be a bit more specific about the payment flow, and what we're actually debating.
These donations aren't tax exempt. 501(c)(3) are tax exempt. If users are paying via Google pay these payments must be tax exempt to the *user*.
This is why software should not be subjected to an "app store" type distribution system, where a monopolist retains absolute control of what software can run on your devices, and can capriciously deny distribution to developers for whatever reason it likes.
The difference is that the default app stores require you to make an account to be able to use them. This would rightfully be considered insane on desktop OSs, yet is considered normal for phones.
Annoyances like requiring an account become a preference, because you have alternatives.
The UE should make it mandatory to permit PWA install popups on all platforms.
Such problems wouldn't arise, because this app could be installable as a cached Web app. A native mobile application could be installed only for specific functionalities.
"It works better in the app?". No thanks. In 99.95% of cases the reasons for that popup are predatory, not in the interest of the user.
... when I want them. Not when the site owner tries to cram them down my throat.
How would you like it if HN and every link you followed today from HN started with an "install me" popup?
The point is it's something the user should initiate, and no one else.
https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
but make sure to "pay the relevant Play service fee, starting October 1, 2026."
Very cool, Google.
We were promised alternative app stores in the EU, but the European Commission does not stop them.
So you are still complying.
Epic Games v. Google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games_v._Google
GitHub Sponsors is another way to raise for an open source organization.
Which they do in fact use, with OSC as a fiscal host. Still doesn’t help here though – Google is unhappy with the nature of transaction (donation that is not tax-exempt in the U.S.), not with the platform on which it occurs.
If they instead made the donations go to e.g. the lead developer, it would probably be allowed (“peer-to-peer payments” can’t use Google Play billing, so the app can “lead users to [another] payment method” [1]). Whether this is a good idea is a whole another question.
[1]: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...
They must have updated their terms.
Also - all those monopoly-stores need to be broken up. It can not be that these mega-corporations continue to be protected by a selfish US government wanting to install monopolies globally.
> Because we are a 501(c)(6), OSC is not a registered 501(c)(3) charity; donations to hosted member projects are not tax-deductible. This is consistent with IRS guidelines — open source donations aren't automatically classified as charitable simply because they are FOSS.
> If your project has a clear charitable purpose, a 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor may be a good fit.
- https://docs.oscollective.org/welcome-and-introduction-to-os...
Knowing how big corporations do things, that document was likely written by someone who doesn't fully understand the jargon or even how pedantic you have to be about words when dealing with legal concepts, who didn't set the policy themself, and who is not responsible for enforcing the policy. So we should take its specific choice of words with a grain of salt.
― Benito Mussolini
As I understand it, there are ways to work around accepting payments or donations outside of the app stores.
It adds one more thing to have to do and explain to users. And even with that piece taken care of, we would need to be constantly vigilant about changes in Apple or Google policies that might eject our app from the storefront.
On my end the experience was more pleasant on f-droid than on Google. On f-droid I had to manually push some things, in repositories. That I solved in a week or so.
On Google end I had to verify my account. Which was not easy feat.
- had to provide my ID several times, because it got rejected multiple times
- I uploaded driving license
- the verification process was stuck
- only after help ticket google employee pushed it forward
- I had to provide many more details, also had to use banking to pay substantial amount of money
- I currently trying to create app, but it requires 14 testers, and it can still be rejected, if their involvement was too poor
I am wondering what more things Google will invent to make my life worse.
By the way my app: https://github.com/rumca-js/OfflineWebSearch
You can go download a random, no-name app from F-Droid and be very confident it does what it says on the tin and won't be riddled with ads or spam you with notifications.
It "just works".
As opposed to play store apps requiring "play store services" meaning having to sign into play store. It refuses to do so on a FOSS principle so I am literally cut off from a lot of apps.
Aurora store helps but apps that "require play store services" don't work.
Not necessarily. Most apps that require Play Services should work fine even if you’re not logged into Google. You do, however, have to have the “gapps” installed. (Some apps would also actually check whether you’ve installed them from the Google Play store and not, say, Aurora, but from my experience most don’t bother.)
Also, perhaps look into microG? It reimplements the Play Services APIs, but is FOSS and only connects to Google servers when it’s necessary for some functionality (e.g. if you enable push notifications): https://microg.org/
Gapps is what exactly. I have stock android on oneplus, just don't have play store signed in.
Many apps refuse to work.
A good way to sidestep all those issues is getting your “everyday” apps from F-Droid :-) I’m only using Aurora Store for things like banking, taxi, or food delivery apps, and those are usually working great. Some banks are more trigger happy (shame on you, Revolut) while others seem to be okay. I really only miss Google Wallet.
microG folks are working on Play Integrity, but it’s an ongoing battle: https://github.com/microg/GmsCore/issues/2967
I wish there was a 'ranking' feature that periodically (maybe daily?) pulled down star/contributor numbers so you could at least look at projects that are more likely to receive continuing support and have basic hygiene like Dependabot alerts
that said, migrating off so many of the Google-native or phone manufacturer apps has been such a liberatory feeling. I do some community organizing in my free-time and am a huge FOSS evangelist in those spaces. there's so many similar values, namely anti-surveillance, and but for resistance to change and preference for hyperpalatable UX, it's such a natural fit
The play store results were ATROCIOUS and user hostile, forcing account creation, full screen video ads and other BS.
I remembered I had f-droid and I found a perfect, no bullshit app that does exactly what I needed and no ads.
They are a blessing when auto updates were finally possible with the official F-Droid app.
We need governments to mandate both Apple and Google to allow web installs of apps. No requirement for Apple/Google pay, Apple/Google login, or Apple/Google services.
Total freedom for users, for developers, and for competitors.
This duopoly has fucked over America and the EU by training us to think only these two companies have the right to decide what gets to be on your phone that you pay for.
They've created a moat so strong that it's impossible to compete with Android/iPhone, so the market cannot even have healthy competition.
F-Droid is not the answer. Regulation is.
And I'll have none of this fangirl/fanboy "but my grandma will fall for scams" nonsense.
Google and Amazon and all the platforms have scammy ads on their platforms. Nobody's doing anything about that.
Technology can be sandboxed, permissioned, signed, fingerprinted, attested, scanned, and blacklisted. It's easy to make this safe in the year of our lord 2026. Don't pretend we don't have a million ways to make this safe for your meemaw. She's more likely to fall down the stairs or get a scam call.
Regulate Google. Regulate Apple. Make our phones free.
Both the Democratic and Republican parties have lots of members who are fed up with big tech.
American labor unions are fed up with big tech and both parties are trying to court them.
She didn't "take too long," she did all she could as long as she could, and is still doing it. The problem is that she was opposed by both political parties and the administration, for whom she was a token to hand to the Bernie and AOC people so they could sell out without being called sellouts.
If Biden had promoted Khan not only would she have had vastly more success, but he would have won the election - demented or not. Instead, if you listened to his press conferences, you would have no idea that she existed. He did not support her. He was a tool for financial scammers his entire career. His tiny little state was to domestic financial scams as Ireland is to worldwide tax dodging.
> Both the Democratic and Republican parties have lots of members who are fed up with big tech.
Few members, with no power. All of the leadership is on the big tech payroll. It's the population which hates big tech, and their opinions don't matter.
https://archive.org/details/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_th...
The public are also easily movable over time and under great pressure. The public have become aggressively pro-Big Pharma and Free Trade globalists in a single generation. Libs have become militantly pro-FBI and CIA anti-Soviet warriors. They literally revived the 50's anti-Commie language to describe everything they didn't like, and worship The Lincoln Project, David Frum, and even goddamn Bill Kristol which I never thought would work. It's literally the same generation that reviled them and anyone who would tolerate them just 20 years ago.
They didn't even have to die for success of the submissiveness revolution. They just had to keep watching, and consuming. And you had to threaten their jobs, all the time.
This is not the same as being unable to affect it at all. It can very easily go from being hot garbage to being flaming toxic waste in a tornado when the only people who show up are the ones trying to steal from everyone else.
Oh, and also they're rolling it back by adding additional hurdles. Directionally, they're starting to remove it.
Why on earth would they let anyone else participate?
NewPipe doesn't support it :(
Many of the thing you're listing are the exact things the platforms would have to be banned from doing by the regulation you're proposing because they're the mechanisms used to exclude competitors.
If you put all apps in a sandbox then they can't perform certain operations (e.g. install other apps) which inherently means they can't compete in the market for doing those things. If apps have to be signed by the platform then the signing fee becomes the vig they charge to everyone even if they're using a competing store, and both that and scanning/fingerprinting provide a mechanism to revoke competing apps under arbitrary pretexts and otherwise grief their developers and users.
Attestation is the thing you would have to ban the most because it's not just subject to abuse, its very mechanism of operation is to prevent existing apps that use it from running on a competing new system at the point in time when the new system has too few users for all the apps to explicitly add support for it, thereby preventing the competitor from getting enough users for that to ever happen.
But attestation doesn't prevent grandma from getting scammed anyway. When the scammer calls pretending to be the grandchild who needs money for an emergency, they use the official signed bank app on the attestation-passing device to transfer money to the scammer. When the scammer is using a fake bank app to steal the user's credentials, the fake app doesn't require attestation.
The actual problem here is that you want to have someone vetting apps for grandma, but you don't want the platforms to be able to insist it be them rather than F-Droid or Aurora etc. Which the platforms will try to claim is chicken and egg (how do you know you can trust F-Droid?) while hoping you don't notice that they don't actually get you out of it -- how do you know you can trust Google?
And they should still be banned from forcing apps to do it under their arbitrary judgements in order to participate on their platform. That isn't the same thing as preventing them from doing it. Some people honestly think they love walled gardens (they don't), but some people honestly need walled gardens. There should even be competing walled gardens. Let me install the best kids app store for my kids, and the best grandmas app store for my grandma.
I'm also not sure that attestation should be banned at the app store or platform level; it's a service. I'd ban it at the bank and merchant level. Attestation should be a tool for the user of the device (just like everything else on the phone they own.) They should be able to get it to attest to whatever they want to get it to attest to - if I'm a company and I issue my employees phones, I might want to make sure those phones haven't been tampered with. If I'm a parent and I issue my children phones, I might want to make sure those phones haven't been tampered with. The problem comes when arbitrary people are using it to make sure that the user hasn't tampered with their own phone since it came from some official list of blessed companies.
Let me install the best kids app store for my kids, and the best grandmas app store for my grandma. Let me be able to use attestation to make sure their phones haven't been altered since the last time I checked.
> If apps have to be signed by the platform
I'd like to get back to apps being signed by upstream, so we know they actually come from the author. I couldn't care less if the platform offers a service which verifies those signatures, and if almost everyone uses that service. That's just DNS. If your platforms service becomes hostile, there will be cheap/free competitors, just like DNS.
Just agreeing loudly. But the problem with F-Droid is that it is to be a store that has been blessed by Google in order to avoid legal questions. I know that this is not their fault, and that they hate it. I exclusively use F-Droid and don't even have a Google Play account, but if they started making decisions that I couldn't stand (they haven't, ever) I wouldn't have any alternative.
I remember the bullshit settlement of Microsoft antitrust is that they had to place a modal popup do select a default browser (that I never saw, once, in any context.) No reason why the platform's store can't be demoted to one of a number of stores other than that it is a profit spinner.
If they do it and it's enabled by default then they still get to grief their competitors because by default anyone who tries to use the competitor gets a big scary red box that deters adoption and has to jump through a bunch of hoops to get past it. It also thwarts adoption of competing signing alternatives because >90% of people will use whatever the default is even if the alternatives are at least as good.
> some people honestly need walled gardens
"Walled garden" is an Orwellian term. It's meant to imply that someone is curating what's inside it and not letting in things you don't want, and that is indeed a useful thing. But then people use the same term to mean a "garden" that locks you inside of it rather than locking bad things out. The only people who need that are small children and adults with mental illnesses severe enough to justify them having a guardian assigned to make their decisions for them.
> I'm also not sure that attestation should be banned at the app store or platform level; it's a service.
It isn't a service at all. The device contains hardware to sign the state of the device using a protected private key. Solving the problem is very simple -- you ban the device from coming with any private key already installed that the user can't freely extract. Then the root of the chain of trust is the customer's public key, not the vendor's, and whether a device is authorized comes down to whether the user's public key is authorized rather than the vendor's, which in turn makes the system vendor-agnostic.
> That's just DNS. If your platforms service becomes hostile, there will be cheap/free competitors, just like DNS.
DNS is actually a pretty terrible model because the "competition" is a fraud. There are registrars and registries and the registrars compete with each other but the registry still sets the price the registrars pay and the registries have a monopoly over every name in that TLD, so the competition can't actually get you a lower price than the monopoly registry itself sets. And the registries only compete with each other to the extent that you think that example.dental is valid substitute for example.football (no, sorry, those are both the same registry anyway) and to the extent that example.co.uk is a domain you could get instead of example.com rather than needing both. Meanwhile ICANN charges an extortionate amount to anyone who wants to become a registry and the entire system is set up to encourage squatting, to the point that the registries are now doing it themselves rather than making any attempt to impede it.
In general if you want something to work well you need to make it a protocol rather than a service. As soon as you allow a central chokepoint to exist you'll have a troll jumping out from under the bridge and trying to collect tolls.
> Regulate Google. Regulate Apple. Make our phones free.
Result: F-Droid regulated out of existence by government agencies captured by Google and Apple.
Corporation like Google should have been fined to the edge of bankruptcy for such predatory behaviour.
Google has an alternative at least (can download other app stores, apks, and have been able to for 15 years), I have no idea how Apple has been allowed to get away with what they do.
Also in the worldwide market it most definitely isn’t a monopoly in phones at all- which is exactly why the EU had to reform their laws (DMA ect)to get regulatory powers over them.
They also play this trick where they pretend the only market is "phones" and ignore all of the complementary markets they're tying together with their phones, like app distribution and browser engines etc., since the market definitions for those shouldn't be the same as it is for "phones" when an app store that can be used on Google and Samsung phones can't be used (and therefore doesn't compete) on Apple phones and vice versa.
The "App Store" is just a natural extension of the club. As far as I'm concerned, they can gatekeep and sloppify as much as they want. Apple users agree to this.
I've never felt slighted that I couldn't hack apart my iPad - though I will absolutely do it once somebody cracks the code and gets a proper Linux kernel running.
Especially in the software community, overwhelmingly self-described libertarian, all voted for this.
It takes a big government to stop this from happening. (It also takes a big government to stop structural racism, etc., which means higher taxes, which means there's no such thing as a fiscal conservative who is also socially liberal. But I digress.)
The US federal government has also played a major role in causing this by passing laws like DMCA 1201 and the CFAA which incumbents use to threaten competitors who attempt adversarial interoperability.
Moreover, the DoJ budget is ~$33B whereas e.g. the military budget is ~$1T, so arguing that the only way to allocate more resources to antitrust enforcement or similar is to raise taxes would imply that all of the existing spending is critically necessary and Congress never e.g. buys tanks the Army doesn't want or otherwise poorly allocates existing funds.
The US Government spends a preposterous amount of money, and the number only ever goes up. It doesn't need to be bigger, it needs to be less inefficient.
The app in question declares itself this way: AnkiDroid is a free, open-source flashcard app for Android with over 10 million installs, used worldwide for various purposes, primarily in medical education and language learning.
But it's registered as a 501(c)(6) non-profit, which is a designation for a "business league or industry association". This is what you use if you're a Chamber of Commerce, not a flash card app!
Obviously we're all reading this expecting that Anki is a 501(c)(3) charity, like most open source organizations, and it's just not. And the distinction is definitely impactful for tax purposes, something a payment processor is going to care about. Both organizations are exempt from tax themselves, but charitable donations are also deductable, and Anki isn't a charity. Likely Google isn't set up to record the distinction in an auditable way.
The bottom line is that Anki's lawyers messed up. Or plausibly are running some kind of scam (e.g. they take the "donations" and then hand them over to a for-profit "member" company). They need to fix their registration if they want to take money from people, this isn't how you do it and this is surely not the only problem they'll have. Seriously, my Fraud Meter is dinging at about 19.6% here...
Other 501(c)(6) organizations you might have heard of include the Linux Foundation and the Rust Foundation.
Anki and Ankidroid are not the same entity and they have different owners, if you want to call it that.
Anki is owned by Nicholas Flint, a physician who sells med school-related decks online under the name AnKing, which controls Ankihub, which now controls Anki after the original founder (Damien Elmes) gave them control about six months ago.
Ankidroid is a non-profit project that arose when there was only an iPhone mobile version of Anki. Completely unrelated to Anki except that it was blessed by the original creator of Anki.
It's also just some nerd programmers who ported Anki to run on Android. It's not some org with a revenue stream and attorneys.
> Obviously we're all reading this expecting that Anki is a 501(c)(3) charity
No, no one is reading it thinking that Anki is a charity.
Anyway, when you are going to harp on about HN not caring about the minutiae of tax policy, you should make sure you understand that you're talking about two unrelated entities run by different people as if they were the same entity.
So... why is one soliciting donations on behalf of the other?! My Fraud Meter is rising, not falling here.
> It's also just some nerd programmers who ported Anki to run on Android. It's not some org with a revenue stream and attorneys.
"Just Some Nerd Programmers" don't, very obviously, have standing to solicit tax exempt donations. Rising further still...
I think a lot of people here are operating on the assumption that apps have the inherent right to ask for money on a proprietary platform that gives them a monetization path. They don't, on any such platform, and never have. There are specific carveouts allowed by the platform vendors for cases we all agree are valuable, like charitable donations. It's just really clear that Anki is playing games here and frankly I really doubt they qualify.
It's not... AnkiDroid was soliciting donations to AnkiDroid, via OpenCollective, which essentially "owns" them financially, for the purpose of soliciting donations.
This is all explained very clearly in the linked GitHub issue:
> AnkiDroid's donations go to Open Source Collective, a US non-profit which acts as our fiscal host.
> AnkiDroid is the Anki client for Android, developed and maintained by volunteers. Nothing is sold in the app and our Open Collective is the sole source of funding for maintenance and development. AnkiDroid is independent from Anki, AnkiWeb, AnkiMobile, and AnkiHub.
While some confusion is understandable, continuing to press on about your "Fraud Meter" just puts egg on your face when you're misunderstanding things through multiple replies explaining them to you.
no one here thinks that there is an "inherent right" to ask for money on a proprietary platform. That's a strawman.
You're also still wrong about the nature of AnkiDroid, and it's making you look silly when you're so confident and rude about it.
So were you though, if you're still standing by "just some nerd programmers". They want to take donations through an outside payment processor, which they simply can't do and you know it. Like, seriously, give me the one sentence summary of what Google is doing wrong here that wouldn't enable essentially arbitrary fraud.
Apps can't put up donation links except in extremely limited circumstances, and this isn't one. And, again, you know it.
Genuinely sorry for being rude, if this seems rude. Doesn't seem rude to me though in context. You were the one who started with the aggressive rhetoric ("harping on", yada yada). We're just flaming, things get hot.
https://oscollective.org
This is an interesting rabbit hole if you bother to go down it, I encourage you to do some more research.
I'm amazed to see the exact playbook be used here. Instead of people opposing Apple's horrible App Store, it seems that every other store is studying their strategies.
I think by the time of Apple's next court case on the App Store, the judge will pay them something back as they'll arrive at the conclusion of Apple doing nothing out of the ordinary.
You may argue that it is terrible. They don't have a democratic gov. But the alternative looks worse every day.
"Regulating" also doesn't mean "taking control".
Since they are public companies the shareholder's benefit is to society's benefit.
>"Regulating" also doesn't mean "taking shareholders' benefit
Technically true, but if the regulations are just suggestions then they won't accomplish anything. When people suggest regulation they want to control how these companies are acting, not just sending them a strongly worded letter.
Yes, but there can be other benefits than monetary ones. Besides, I find it rediculous to believe that wealthy people receiving more benefits automatically translates to improvements for the general society.
To add another point: The monetary value these companies create is often only possible because of their monopolistic market distortion. I don't think it can be a net benefit for society when competitors have little to no chance to offer a better product.
> When people suggest regulation they want to control how these companies are acting
That's true. In your original comment you also said "government taking over YouTube" which is why I thought we were talking about complete transfer of control à la planned economy, which is normally not the goal of regulations.
It works great on Mac, and iPhone. I imagine as more people try this sort of user experience, they might wonder like I am "Why use a Google experience device at all?" Most of what I use these days is simple and the extra value-add AI features, attention driven designs that justify new OS and new hardware, and even app stores barely feel necessary. OK some people say "but banking software" but very rarely do I have to use my banking software in a way I couldn't get to in the web browser?
I believe we're very close to having a 80:20 experience designed out in both hardware and software for laptops, phones and smart watches. I can't see these monopolies holding out much longer.