WireGuard restored in Google Play Store after controversial removal | Hacker News Reader

WireGuard restored in Google Play Store after controversial removal

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WireGuard was restored only because Jason Donenfeld has submitted a new version of the app which no longer contains a link to the donation page. As of yesterday Google did not contact WireGuard maintainers to bring clarity to the donation link policy of Google Play.

The issue is not solved and it remains as pressing as ever, Google has begun to crack down on open source projects which use an external donation platform such as Patreon, putting the livelihood of open source developers at risk.

Their policy affects several open source apps, most of which remain taken down, including andOTP.

It's worth noting that Apple allows open source developers to link to their external donation pages from iOS apps.

The initial takedown was discussed in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21268389

> The issue is not solved and it remains as pressing as ever

There's nothing to solve. It is explicitly against Google's policies. You have to be a tax exempt organisation to accept donations from an app in the play store.

The issue is not about accepting donations through Google Play Billing, but about having a link in your app to the external donation page of the project.

Could you link to the policy section that explictly bans external donation links from being present in apps, unless you're a non-profit organization? People have been referring to the Google Play Billing terms of service, but that has nothing to do with linking to external donation services such as Patreon.

Yeah this is the page: https://play.google.com/about/monetization-ads/payments/

For some reason it doesn't include the following text that I got in the email:

> Alternative payment mechanisms to Google Play’s in-app billing service are only permitted if the products purchased are to be used outside of the app.

> For example:

> For physical goods or services, such as movie tickets, or a publication where the price also includes a hard copy subscription; or

> For digital goods that may be downloaded to devices and used outside of the app, such as songs that can be played on other music players.

> Donations to 527 designated tax exempt organizations are also permitted.

Note the last line, effectively stating that donations to non-tax exempt organisations like WireGuard are not allowed.

I think the last line refers to donations collected within the app. There is no publicly available Google Play policy for which the reasonable interpretation is that apps are not allowed to contain external links to donation pages.

In comparison, Apple clearly states that you must link to an external donation page from your app if you're not a charity, while charities are also allowed to collect money within the app with Apple Pay.

> 3.2.1 Acceptable

> (vi) Approved nonprofits may fundraise directly within their own apps or third-party apps, provided those fundraising campaigns adhere to all App Review Guidelines and offer Apple Pay support. These apps must disclose how the funds will be used, abide by all required local and federal laws, and ensure appropriate tax receipts are available to donors.

> 3.2.2 Unacceptable

> (iv) Unless you are an approved nonprofit or otherwise permitted under Section 3.2.1 (vi) above, collecting funds within the app for charities and fundraisers. Apps that seek to raise money for such causes must be free on the App Store and may only collect funds outside of the app, such as via Safari or SMS.

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

There is no amount of money you can pay Google for better support, like you could maybe Amazon or IBM for their products. You can say enterprise support is worthless, but if you're paying $1k a month or buy hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of licensing, you can bet their sales and support reps are going to at least make it seem like they're trying to resolve things.

How did this get resolved? Because WireGuard brought a lot of media attention to it. You can't pay Google for better support. Maybe they'd watch more carefully if your app brought in a lost of sales revenue or ad revenue, but now your app is all dependent on its popularity and maybe its monetary value. (and popularity still didn't save the Tumblr app from Apple on the other side of this).

How did bringing media attention to the issue fix it, if WireGuard is the one that backed down?

This isn't a dupe even though it has been flagged as one...

Unrelated note: The android app works great and for me (on the first pixel phone) it seems battery drain was vastly improved in the 20191016 version. Now it feels like I can have it on 24/7 without concern.

Thanks for that feedback about the battery drain. If you do notice something is off there again, please don't hesitate to email us about it, as that kind of thing is very useful feedback.

This is not a dupe, but a new development of the issue.

The information that Wireguard had been restored, but without the donation link, was in the thread yesterday:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21274220

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21284261

Given that this was the biggest story on HN a couple days ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2019-10-16), and there isn't significant new information, another big discussion is certain to mostly repeat the discussion that already happened.

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