this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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Nice to see ljdawson's greed has not stopped. I paid for Sync Dev back in the day, whose license was tied to Google Play account. I purged Google from my life, so I no longer could get an update to the Sync app from Play Store. I provided him the proof of my purchase on his Discord server. He banned me after denying me providing an updated APK for the license I paid for. Never paid for Sync. Never will again.
I'm confused.
Were you not aware that almost every app on the play store is a limited licence? Like, you can't move over to Windows and expect the license to carry over by default. You don't pay for an app on Google's store and automatically get it on iOS as well.
What you wanted would have required rebuilding the app to not use play services to verify that it was paid for. While it would be nice if a developer does that, exhibition expecting it to be the default approaches absurdity when it is most definitely not the norm.
You making the decision to degoogle is great, but that's your choice. Expecting a developer to bend over backwards and rewrite part of their app for that is just silly. It's fine to ask, nothing wrong there, but calling someone greedy because they said no? That's not cool at all.
Developer was provided proof of purchase, and there was no rebuilding required. You think devs individually build and hardcore individual APKs per license and account? LOL. Play Store acts as a gatekeeper of APKs for apps, and if the account holder has paid for the license, Google allows an authorised download of the APK for paid app binary. This paid app binary can even be duplicated and pirated to other phones if wanted (which I never do) and it runs exactly 1:1, with the exception of apps that verify license via internet connection (Drastic DS, which I also paid for..)
Dev said no to a proof of purchase AND chose to ban me over it. The latter part is why I am pissed. Its not that the license carries, thats just his gratefulness (or lack of it) he would be free to engage in. I am not a loyal bootlicker.
Try that with any other software.
Tell EA you want to move your games from origin to steam.
Tell steam you want to move your games from steam to gog.
Tell gog you want to move your games to steam.
All of them will laugh at you.
Are you unhinged or delusional? APKs are deployable installation binaries. I am not moving licenses around. There are no different "platforms" involved. This is not Android to iOS, or Steam to Epic/Ubisoft. Your analogy is absolute pure trash.
The fact that you bring up "try with other software" is also the most dumb argument I have ever heard, and one that tells you are the one who has never purchased software and/or never dealt with professional company software support. Any sizeable and respected developer is reasonable to understand how system requirements work, and is not banning people for such a request.
If you are a Sync fanboy, go pay Laurence a thousand dollaridoos to piss me off. But stop acting lame.
You're a troll. Gimme a second while I find the block user button in Sync.
Which I'm not a fanboy of, btw, I'm waiting for Boost.
Oh there it is! See you never!
The Play Store maintains your list of purchases. The dev would have had to build a new APK just for you with ads disabled.
On top of that, the APK wouldn't be tied to you, so you could distribute it to others, possibly preventing sales. I'm sure you wouldn't do that, but others might.
So yeah, it's possible. But it's reasonable for the dev to say no.
False. APK binaries, no matter paid or free, are built and deployed in a standard manner across devices. Google Play backend either has app bundles or APKs that are standard across Android, and the only differentiators are either DPI targets or ARM7/ARM8-64/i386 (last one is Intel Atom et al) ISA targets.
He would still have to build an APK without ads just for you.
That is not how APK builds for paid apps work. I suggest purchasing apps to actually know this stuff. I have purchased enough expensive apps in the past out of my college pocket allowance.
Your subscription is tied to Google. He would have to tear out the check for a subscription since you refuse to use the typical system.
Hence, he'd have to produce a build specifically for you without that code. This isn't rocket science.
Paid app binaries are not the same as free app binaries. Free APK of Sync and paid APK of Sync Pro/Dev were not the same, so there was nothing on dev's end to do. Do not play a losing game to win the argument.
I am aware that the APK is the same. BUT if he sent you the APK without changes, your purchases would not be activated because you refuse to use Google. In order to restore them, he'd have to manually enable them for you. Use your head.
That is not true. The paid app binary can be shared across different Android phones and it will work exactly the same. Sync has no online verification system for license. There are very, very few apps that have the online license verification system you are thinking of, and I can cite those examples as a paid user of these kinds of apps – Neutron Player, DrasticDS, DUAL game.
The reason I can tell you this is because I had Sync Dev from when I had google account, and I took the APK from there, offline, with no Google account signing onto my new phone, and it worked exactly the same. I still have the Sync Dev 18.2 APK I think, but have it no longer installed, since API changes killed it, and I do not bother with ReVanced. This is why I asked the dev for a new APK around when version 20 was stable released, because v18 got old.
The paid app binary and the non paid binary are exactly the same. You do not download a new apk when you purchase content in an app. Sync's "online verification" is through Google Play' libraries. When you purchase, your device received an entitlement to that specific purchase which allows it to re-verify that purchase without hitting Google's services each time the app is opened. Since it was a lifetime subscription, this entitlement never had to be renewed.
As for it working between phones, either the entitlement is bundled with the app (which I'm not positive of), or it's entirely possible the version you had was bugged so that it acted as though you had purchased even though you had not in the event these libraries were not available.
Either way makes no difference. You need the entitlement to activate the features, not an entirely new APK, which means he'd have to produce a build either with that entitlement (not possible) or without the purchase verification code (since you don't have the entitlement).
There is no Google Play authentication, like you describe, for APKs that require one time fee. Sync for reddit (Dev or Pro) had no subscription model. That is precisely why online verification based licensing is different and used by very few apps, since it is harder to implement.
Ljdawson actually seems to have gone the subscription route for Sync for Lemmy, precisely because of what I have described in this discussion, and because of smaller Lemmy userbase being opposite of Reddit's larger userbase compensating for individual lower license fees.