Make ShoLi available on the Play Store
rg3 opened this issue · 4 comments
First off, thank you for your work on ShoLi. I use it every week. Now, to the point.
I know this can be a polemic topic. I'd like to politely request that this app is made available officially from the Play Store. The reasons for this request are better explained by Moxie Marlinspike (author of TextSecure) in the following comment:
signalapp/Signal-Android#53 (comment)
Naturally, as a FOSS author and backer I'm very glad ShoLi is available under the GPLv3 and to be able to build it, and I'd like it to continue to be available on F-Droid for interested users, but the Play Store is my preferred distribution channel for the reasons stated above (tl;dr: not having to compromise the security of my mobile phone to install the software I want).
I have no problem with Google's store, even if the licenses of the applications are not visible as they should be. I indeed agree with your reasons: I think that people writing free software for the mobile machines often use very poor and confusing tools (forums, apk in the wild...). This is not good for security, project history, and so on.
That being said, I do not have any Google account configured or application installed on my phone. I chose to install a ROM without them to get rid of the company monitoring. I could have a look to Play, but this is not a priority for me.
However, ShoLi being free software, I guess another FOSS developer with a Google account could distribute it. And to answer your security preoccupations, I could put a link from here to the correct Play account, as long as the license is respected, the path to the sources is provided and my name (along with the one of other contributors) is cited.
Ah, I see. The lack of a Google account is a bit unusual but I do understand your position. Thanks for your answer.
I have joined the Play developer console today. Everyone reading this, please feel free to take screenshots of ShoLi on your handset to feed the future Google's application page. Doing this, of course, you agree they will be published on Play. Send your pictures to david.soulayrol@gmail.com.
Thanks.