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Comment by WestCoastJustin | Hacker News Reader

Permission is one of my major gripes about the whole smart phone thing. I wish devs would take the spirit of GNU and just release some simple free apps without all these "adware" crap. For example, I wanted to install a led flashlight app a couple days ago. The one with 10 million downloads wants access to my phone book, internet, browser, etc. WTF! This is a LED flashlight app and it has an install base of 10 million, why on earth does it need access to the internet and phone book?! Arg, there is a total disconnect between useful apps and privacy! I do not know what the answer is, but the current system really grinds my gears!

Imagine if you wanted to use the ls, cd, grep, tar, pwd, top, etc commands on unix and an "ad" would pop up, or maybe you would see it connecting to the internet. These are utilities too. Is this acceptable behavior?

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App stores are great for commercial developers but culturally clash with open source apps. If someone were to take grep and commercialize it, no one would use it. (Though I have seen stories about it happening with Blender). But if grep were an app in the Play Store, and it was open source, someone would grab the source, commercialize it, and maybe even invest in advertising to make their grep to the most popular one.

Spare Parts is (was?) part of the Android Open Source Project, but got posted to the Android Market with ads added and only minor changes. Romain Guy (of Google's Android team) posted sample code for a Shelves application and had the same experience.

I love open source, but make my living with closed source Android apps. One of my early projects actually was an LED flashlight app. I tried selling it for a week or two, then switched to a free and donate model which doesn't make much money. My other apps do, and it's just a flashlight so I have no interest in monetizing it. I also rarely update it, don't answer support emails for it, and certainly don't buy banner ads to promote it. Without any marketing effort on my part, there is no way it will compete with the commercial offerings. I've considered open sourcing it, and maybe I should, but I'm still a bit attached, as it was one of my first apps, and I'd hate to see a fork of it with ads and junk grow more popular than it. I also wouldn't have much time to review pull requests and build/test new APKs to publish.

The app is TeslaLED. If it works on your device (works on most modern devices) then it's probably what you're looking for. Sadly if it doesn't it is unlikely to get updated in the near future with support.

Nova is the best 3rd-party launcher by far. I love your work with it.

> Romain Guy (of Google's Android team) posted sample code for a Shelves application and had the same experience.

As a 3rd anecdote, Ken Magic (also at Google) made an open-source Solitaire app [1] for Android, and I'd guess at least 1 in 5 of the (numerous) Solitaire apps in the Play Store are minor tweaks of his code with ads slapped on -- you can recognize them by the card art.

I made my own zero-permissions Solitaire app [2] and purposefully haven't open-sourced it because I would expect someone to slap ads on it. Even worse, considering that I don't have a large install base, they could probably outrank mine in the Play Store search results (granted, I don't do myself any favors by simply calling it "Solitaire").

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kmagic.sol...

[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.intoorbit.... (it's a built-from-scratch clone of Ken Magic's Solitaire but with vector graphics and an updated UI)

> I'd hate to see a fork of it with ads

Having seen this happen with Connectbot and others, I'm under the impression that open-sourcing Android apps isn't worth it, in spite of what your principles about software may be.

Which makes me wonder, does this happen on other platforms (iOS, BB10, WP7/8) too, or is it just Android?

How about a licence with a special clause forbidding adware and/or "privacyware"?

As long as you hold copyright, you could always offer different licensing if anyone had a genuine need for it (say re-licence under GPL for some "worthy" project, or re-sell under BSD for a price).

While certainly possible, I see two caveats here:

a) The ‘worthy project’ would have to license their product under GPL, too, which has the obvious effect that the whole thing is properly open-sourced again and everybody can slap ads on their stuff.

b) A license forbidding the modification to add advertisements is certainly not DFSG-free, and while this is likely of less concern in the Android ecosystem, I tend to measure the open-sourcness of a programme by its possible inclusion in Debian.

I'dd hate to see a fork of it with ads and junk grow more popular than it.

Last time I checked, the google play store interface only broadly discriminated between for-pay and free apps. I think adding other broad categories like "open source" and "no tracking / advertising" would help to keep these fork+advertising versions from becoming popular.

Ah, TeslaLED! An app that lit the way for me and my family in darkened mini-vans for quite some time (I bought the donate app, of course). It was one of the few flashlight apps that wasn't ridden with ads.

I've only recently switched to Cyanogenmod, which comes with its own built-in flashlight app, and I'm committed to not installing anything on the phone now that requires a Google login (like Google Play, for example). So no TeslaLED now.

But thanks for a great app! TeslaLED is a very well-made app, and looking at the Google Play page now, I see it has a lot of features I wasn't even aware of. Best of luck with your future apps.

Isn't there a website that gives you a direct download link for any APK in the Play store? It sounds like something that should exist...

> I wish devs would take the spirit of GNU and just release some simple free apps

The "spirit of GNU" was a bunch of guys working on an ecosystem of software that the participants were all developing on and sharing together.

It wasn't some guy who said "I want this thing for free, go forth and do it for me now kthx"

True, also GNU was/is made possible by university funding (MIT in particular but also others) and corporate donations (much of which ironically comes out of profits from proprietary software). Not really the same situation as an indie Android dev trying to put some food on the table with their apps.

That's where you will want to install f-droid. It is an alternate "app store" for free apps, with no crapware (they even re-compile the apps from source themselves, and do some level of auditing to remove unwanted "features" from some apps [ it is clearly stated in the descriptions when they do this though ]). BTW, the flashlight app from f-droid is a simple no-frills flashlight app without ads or anything.

Perfect, this is exactly what I've been looking for. I've recently installed Cyanogenmod and have foresworn having any apps on my phone requiring a Google sign-in. This includes Google Play, so an alternative app store with utility apps is exactly what I need.

If you are using Android and DashClock[0] there is a flashlight App without any permissions called DashLight[1].

[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.nurik.roma...

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spectrl.Da...

It's possible it doesn't use any of those permissions. Noobies don't know that/how they can configure the requested permissions.

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