Re: Revends le !

Je suis allé voir dans les issues du github de maps.me

Il s'avère que maps de f-droid était le fork des buids de omim/maps.me sur gitlab sur lequel le support de google analytics et des pubs étaient retirées. Les auteurs de omim semblaient ennuyé (euphémisme) que l'auteur de ces builds mentionnaient leur addresse email et leur bugtracker et de devoir faire du support pour les versions f-droid. Je pense que la raison la plus importante de leur énervement vient de la monétisation de leur appli par les pubs et le store google qui n'était plus réalisée et le fait que la build f-droid utilisait leur infrastructure pour télécharger les cartes.

Donc j'imagine qu'ils ont fait en sorte que leur serveurs n'acceptaient pas les requêtes des versions f-droid et qu'ils ont contacté l'auteur de ces builds pour lui demander de les retirer.

https://github.com/mapsme/omim/issues/10387:

@DirtYiCE actually applications based on maps.me should use they own map servers. One reason is that we provide sources but not server infrastructure, another reason is maps and code should correspond: some changes should be done in maps and code at the same time. We do not control forks code and our maps should not correspond it.

This guys even use our support e-mail in they app and our support team often spend lots of time to find out that user uses another app and error is not related to maps.me. Do you think it's right to do so?

aussi:
https://github.com/mapsme/omim/issues/11210
https://github.com/mapsme/omim/issues/10686

Il n'ont pas toujours été complètement hostile à f-droid mais ça a vite escaladé:

https://github.com/mapsme/omim/issues/85 (@zverik et @ biodranik étaient des devs de maps.me, @relan l'auteur d'un premier fork)

Zverik: But other than that, it does. As far as I understand, we do not object to publishing the app on f-droid, though we'd prefer only release versions to be published.

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pizzamaker: A thread for its inclusion has been created at https://f-droid.org/forums/topic/maps-me/

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Zverik: thanks!

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[...entre temps le fork sort sur f-droid...]

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Zverik: I wonder how does it do map downloading...

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relan: It uses the same servers as the official builds (commit).

I hope you won't consider this fork as a competitor. It targets a different audience that wouldn't use MAPS.ME otherwise due to proprietary dependencies. It's a win for everyone: F-Droid users get a great navigation app, you get new users (many of which are quite advanced and socially active). I'd like to cooperate with the upstream as much as possible, so feel free to contact me.

Many thanks to the MAPS.ME team and Mail.ru for making all this possible!

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Zverik: You have removed all analytics from your fork, and still using our servers in not a legal way, without our permission, putting our official users under a risk of servers overloading.

This is gray zone, we definitely can not guarantee anything. Please consider using your own servers for maps as soon as possible.

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relan: User tracking is a show stopper for F-Droid version because MAPS.ME uses proprietary libraries for that.

I'm quite confused by your statement. Could you please clarify

Do users of the official builds loose the right to access your servers if they disable user tracking in preferences?

If I make a fork with all the user tracking left but disabled by default (with the ability for a user to enable it easily in preferences), will users of this fork have the right to access your servers?

This introduces a very high barrier for F-Droid version. I'll try to find people who would like to run server infrastructure for the project, but most probably I'll have to shut it down. :(

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@biodranik: Without analytics libraries we can’t count these users as "ours". If we can’t count, we can’t say that we got new users.
If user installs MAPS.ME from Google Play or AppStore, at least we see download numbers and updates count, even if analytics was disabled by user.

But we actually get higher load on our servers.

We never gave any official permission to use our servers for a forked applications. Even more, you made our private server urls publicly available, without requesting any permission.
Documentation states that you should use your own servers: https://github.com/mapsme/omim/blob/master/docs/INSTALL.md#map-servers

Please, don’t get me wrong. I’m a great fan of Open Source and want to spread good software everywhere. And it was feasible to grant an official permission in your case to use our servers, or even get a separate server, just for f-droid users.

Let’s discuss a possible option which can at least temporarily reduce risks of overloading our servers by f-droid users. If you append string "-fdroid" or "fdroid-" to ‘res’ variable (after line 45, res = HashUniqueID(res); in file android/jni/com/mapswithme/platform/Platform.cpp ) at least we can block possible DDOS attempts from your fork. This ID is used when client tries to download any map from our servers. If you use your own server(s), it is not used at all.

Après ça a été repris par @axet, supposément utilisant son propre serveur pour les maps mais à priori ce n'était plus le cas dernièrement. Aucune idée de ce qui s'est passé en coulisse (un cease&desist?), l'issue tracker sur gitlab ne mentionne pas et ça semble très récent.