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Comment by black_puppydog | Hacker News Reader

The very same thing happened to manyverse (android ssb client) the other day. Got de-listed, resubmitted without donation page, now it's back up.

How google tries to claim any sort of support for open source is beyond me. What open source app doesn't need a donation link? Those approved and funded by google don't, okay. But other than that?

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Oruxmaps even had a donate version that went through proper Google channels when the free version was forcibly removed either for a donation link in the app that was incompletely removed from the Play store build variant or because of a donation link on the product website. It never came back, now the paid version on Play is effectively a billboard "you could save those dollars by going over to F-Droid where we are payment optional".

This is good news for F-Droid.

I just wish F-Droid had a better design but I guess that's just the nature of OSS. It always looked a bit shady and out-of-date, which probably hurts it's popularity.

Well, throw them a couple of bucks a month, they have a donation button on their homepage ;)

But the design is fine, at least with dark theme. For me, the UX is better than Play Market.

Someone started a G-Droid project[1] with the goal of being a better local client for F-Droid. It's not a full replacement yet, but has many additional features and a better UI. Hope it takes off and perhaps gets integrated into the main client some day.

[1] https://gitlab.com/gdroid/gdroidclient/

The strangest fact is, those donation pages only have some links, there is no in-app payment. I don't understand what Google is thinking about when they banned donations...

Wait. I suddenly understand something I've seen previously...

There is a workaround! You simply upload two versions of the app, the free edition and the supporter edition. The support's edition is a paid app. You can ask the users who want to support you to install the paid app in your free app. The program itself is still 100% free and open source, there is no functionality restrictions in the free app, the donation notice can be turned off - just as a way to encourage donations. And it's nothing against the rules of the store.

> I don't understand what Google is thinking about when they banned donations.

They're thinking that they're a monopoly and can do whatever the hell they want without needing to justify themselves?

As far as I can tell, probably!

hazarding a guess, i’m assuming people tried using off-platform payments described as donations to sidestep play store payments

Yes. This is what I suspect. But knocking out all donations using a big ban hammer is not acceptable here, it should be decided on a case-by-case basis. For example, a standard I can think of, is distinguishing donations and payments that influence the functionality of the application/service, and those that have no effect.

> But knocking out all donations using a big ban hammer is not acceptable here

To be fair they didn't. You can accept donations if you're an actual charity (like Wikipedia is). The line they drew isn't perfectly fair, no, but it's not a full ban hammer, either.

That way google gets a cut of the donation.

Oops, it's not a good idea! I now see the motivation behind it!

This is the reason Apple started doing this way back. Sad to see Google follow suit. I guess the bottom line is the bottom line...

I thought this was a Apple only thing and Google doesn't do this. For example, you cannot buy Audible books frim iOS apuo but can from the Android app.

You can, but I don't think you're supposed to direct your users to put their credit card info in, that all needs to be handled somewhere outside the app (with a message like please sign in on our website). Which seems very blatantly anticompetitive to me.

Now that I think of it, Uber has you put your credit card in. I'm not sure why that's allowed

It's allowed because Play Store in-app billing is only required for digital goods & services fulfilled by the app, not physical goods & services fulfilled outside your device. Uber isn't selling you app functionality, they're selling you the physical service of transportation, so they're exempt.

Quote from policy [1]:

Developers offering products within another category of app downloaded on Google Play must use Google Play In-app Billing as the method of payment, except for the following cases:

- Payment is solely for physical products

- Payment is for digital content that may be consumed outside of the app itself (e.g. songs that can be played on other music players).

[1] https://play.google.com/about/monetization-ads/payments/

Oh, what if the donation link added you to a list of contributors to the website. Seems like that would be "digital content that may be consumed outside of the app itself" which might be a workaround. Google might ban it anyway of course

I am sort of annoyed the other replier didn't see the sarcasm here, so I'm going to point it out, and note that it's funny -- seeing the motivation behind a behavior doesn't automatically invalidate it.

What’s wrong with that? They’re paying to host and review the app and create the platform it runs on.

It's arguable since it's "donation" so one may expect to get the full donation instead of 30% cut by google but one may argue what exactly is (or isn't) a donation.

I’m not sure why you’d expect to not pay a fee. Google’s expenses are the same for apps that take a charge as those that take a donation. Credit card processors charge the same fees on donations.

A donation doesn’t magically make everyone else work for free.

> Credit card processors charge the same fees on donations.

Yes, they charge 1/10 of what Google charges. The 30% has nothing to do with how much it cost them to run the service, so let's not pretend that they _have_ to charge them.

(I'm not saying they should offer cheap/free donations, I just don't think it's fair to talk about how much it costs them to run the service given that that's clearly not the driving factor)

To clarify, it’s a 30% cut, not just some small payment processing fee.

So Google can make the donation go through them, cripple the normal version, and take a 20% processing fee?

30%

And then Google gets ~30% of your donations.

For sure Google would reimburse that rake off since they have been prodigious beneficiaries.

A paid app means Google gets to claim some revenues out of it.

So Google get what they want. The sweet 30pc cut on donations

That's what PPSSPP already does. AFAIK PPSSPP Gold only differs in price and the icon.

Seems to have happened to AndOTP:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21269542

This is ridiculous. May as well only publish open source apps on F-Droid and similar.

Open source app can be compiled and installed without Google play store. If you are hosting on their platform, you adhere to their rules, you are not paying monthly for your free app download bandwith and storage do you ?

That doesn't mean you can't question (and even criticize!) the rules or their application.

Wow great point. Now why the hell can't they have a donation link?

Because you can't use Google's store as a sales funnel without giving them a 30% cut. It doesn't matter if you're a company taking payments or an individual accepting donations.

Wrong. You can’t even use Google with giving them a 30% cut since donations are prohibited from Google Payments.

I'm not a lawyer, but aren't sales and donations quite different? For instance donations tend to have negative taxes...

Not unless your entity is 503(c) tax-exempt which is explicitly allowed by Google.

These “donations” are more like tips, which are treated as taxable income.

I don’t see the problem here. The outrage in this thread seems more about people wanting a different set of rules for OSS and possibly avoiding income tax than anything else. If there are a different set of rules for OSS, then that just makes it easier to abuse the platform. Google’s policy seems fair to me.

"Tips" might well be taxable income. But that doesn't automatically entitle Google to a cut of them. Talk about a greedy land grab.

Hmm, yeah, I guess that if we want patronage to become a viable economic model, then it will have to be taxed at some point... Since I mostly give to (AFAIK) tax-exempt entities, I didn't think of this...

But neither seems to have Google ! While the global license/patronage debates are already a decade old, and we have seen new companies get started and even established in this sector (Patreon). For instance this "donations" page only seems to cover non-profits ? https://www.google.com/nonprofits/offerings/google-donation-...

> you are not paying monthly for your free app download bandwith and storage do you ?

Do I have that option?

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