[Important Announcement] MPDroid about to be pulled from Play Store

[abarisain]

UPDATE : MPDroid stays, thanks ! Please check my final answer

Hi,

Today, MPDroid got threatened of removal by Google.
I tried to appeal, but it got denied and MPDroid will probably be removed from the Play Store soon(ish).

Since it's still on the store, I pushed 1.07 Final. It's a release that I'm proud of, because it's the first stable release in a year. I want to use this space to say thank you to all contributors. Especially to @avuton , who has been doing a crazy work inside JMPDComm.

Anyway, 1.07 Final contains a small nag (only shown once), to warn Play Store users of what is happening.

I also reached out to F-Droid to try to get 1.07 updated there too. APKs are still downloadable here, and the project will remain open source. It's something I strongly believe in, even more tonight.

I'm still unsure about what the next steps are for us, or where the project will go. We barely released new versions, so after all it does not change much.

If you are curious, I've written a post about this : http://nlss.fr/mpdroid/

Thanks for reading!

[ranperry]

This is sad.

On Mon, Dec 1, 2014 at 5:02 PM, Arnaud Barisain Monrose < notifications@github.com> wrote:

Hi,

Today, MPDroid got threatened of removal by Google.

I tried to appeal, but it got denied and MPDroid will probably be removed from the Play Store soon(ish).

Since it's still on the store, I pushed 1.07 Final. It's a release that I'm proud of, because it's the first stable release in a year. I want to use this space to say thank you to all contributors. Especially to @avuton https://github.com/avuton , who has been doing a crazy work inside JMPDComm.

Anyway, 1.07 Final contains a small nag (only shown once), to warn Play Store users of what is happening.

[image: Nag 1] https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/312529/5254064/a15ace5a-79ad-11e4-8da1-c9173dd2318c.png [image: Nag2] https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/312529/5254066/a2d5e1ac-79ad-11e4-806f-d498d38fad8d.png

I also reached out to F-Droid to try to get 1.07 updated there too. APKs are still downloadable here, and the project will remain open source. It's something I strongly believe in, even more tonight.

I'm still unsure about what the next steps are for us, or where the project will go. We barely released new versions, so after all it does not change much.

If you are curious, I've written a post about this : http://nlss.fr/mpdroid/

Thanks for reading!

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/abarisain/dmix/issues/656.

[burmar]

This is more than sad!!!!! it's a real shame!!! anyway this is the best app to control an mpd server in the whole world so please keep on work on it

[Jarige]

Wow man, this is really sucky. I love your app and I use it very often! Please do try to call Google and do whatever you can to stop this from happening? To be honest, I would just try to call their Play store support number and ask. It's not really the team you need for your problem, but maybe they're nice enough to give you a real person to talk to. There's never any harm in asking, anyway: https://support.google.com/googleplay/table/6068053?hl=en You still have a some time to prevent this from happening and to relieve a lot of us!

[Jarige]

By the way, as this is a fork of PMix, could that be related? It could explain your app being detected automatically, the sources could look alike too much.

[abarisain]

I don’t think it is related. The sources really don’t have much in common anymore, they’re barely recognizable=

[burmar]

Now i'm going to tell maybe a stupid thing... sorry for that but i'm really thinking to what can be wrong to them.. Maybe the design of little headphones icon on the bar when MPDroid is running that is really similar to Play Music's ones... can it be the reason?

[Jarige]

Hmm, I'm actually considering making a phone call to Google tomorrow about this notice just to gain that bit of crucial information. This seems to be ridiculous, unfair and unjustified. If I do so, I'll let you know here.

[burmar]

Can we do something all together?

[Jarige]

Flood their Play store helpline? xD At least I'll probably be making a call tomorrow. They're the store I downloaded the app from, right? Seems legit to ask why it will be removed. The phone number seems to be free of charge in the Netherlands at least, so it doesn't harm to call.

[Jarige]

Apparently, some developers do get a more detailed explanation after replying to the e-mail: http://andriyadi.me/movreak-got-suspended-now-its-back-on-google-play-again/ Sadly though, abarisain already appealed and now Google said that they won't reply to his e-malis anymore. I'll not hang up easily tomorrow.

[kingosticks]

It's utterly insane you can't at least discover what copyright you've allegedly infringed. Could it have been album artwork? Either way, very sorry to read this. So much fantastic work has gone into this from everyone. For what it's worth, I'll still be pushing this as the best Android client to use with Mopidy.

Flood their Play store helpline? xD At least I'll probably be making a call tomorrow. They're the store I downloaded the app from, right? Seems legit to ask why it will be removed. The phone number seems to be free of charge in the Netherlands at least, so it doesn't harm to call.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/abarisain/dmix/issues/656#issuecomment-65154881.

[Jarige]

There are more apps with album artwork download possibilities though, right? Heck there are apps designed to do exactly that: downloading album art.

[kingosticks]

You are of course right but nothing about this makes sense. It was a wild guess as I can't think of anything else anyone would have a claim on. On 1 Dec 2014 23:56, "Jarige" notifications@github.com wrote:

There are more apps with album artwork download possibilities though, right? Heck there are apps designed to do exactly that: downloading album art.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/abarisain/dmix/issues/656#issuecomment-65160996.

[Jarige]

If not artwork, who's copyright would be infringed? It's an open source app for crying out loud, they shouldn't be able to get away with this!

[gitneal]

Hi Abarisain,

Thanks VERY much for your work on this product. What Google did is infuriating, most of all the automated "appeal" rejection (wtf?).

We all like the use of "MPD" in the app name, but I'm wondering if the rejection was due to the word "Droid" in the app name, since Droid is trademarked by Lucas [edit...thanks kingosticks] and licensed to Motorola (not Google) and Google just sold Motorola to Lenovo. So this could be a takedown request coming from Lenovo.

Assuming it's Lenovo that's generating the takedown request, what if you changed the app name to "Android MPD Client" or something like that (after getting some assurance that they won't ban you in case that's not the issue).

Please don't abandon us on Android. Please keep trying to contact someone at Google, or maybe the MPD guys, or even the press. You have a lot of loyal users here. I, for one, would contribute to a Pro version if you put one out. You are a great developer and this is a great app.

[kingosticks]

lucas film (of star wars fame) own the trademark for droid so it's pretty unlikely to be that. On 2 Dec 2014 00:18, "gitneal" notifications@github.com wrote:

Hi Abarisain,

Thanks VERY much for your work on this product. What Google did is infuriating, most of all the automated "appeal" rejection (wtf?).

We all like the use of "MPD" in the app name, but I'm wondering if the rejection was due to the word "Droid" in the app name, since Droid is trademarked by Motorola (not Google) and Google just sold Motorola to Lenovo. So this could be a takedown request coming from Lenovo.

Assuming it's Lenovo that's generating the takedown request, what if you changed the app name to "Android MPD Client" or something like that (after getting some assurance that they won't ban you in case that's not the issue).

Please don't abandon us on Android. Please keep trying to contact someone at Google, or maybe the MPD guys, or even the press. You have a lot of loyal users here. I, for one, would contribute to a Pro version if you put one out. You are a great developer and this is a great app.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/abarisain/dmix/issues/656#issuecomment-65163164.

[Jarige]

And a simple search also reveals many more apps having Droid in their names, even more obvious than MPDroid: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=droid&c=apps&docType=1&sp=CAFiBwoFZHJvaWR6AhgAigECCAE%3D

[ranperry]

We need to $upport this. I have just donated to this project. I believe it should be available one way or the other. Keep up the good work guys!

On Mon, Dec 1, 2014 at 7:30 PM, Jarige notifications@github.com wrote:

And a simple search also reveals many more apps having Droid in their names, even more obvious than MPDroid:

https://play.google.com/store/search?q=droid&c=apps&docType=1&sp=CAFiBwoFZHJvaWR6AhgAigECCAE%3D

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/abarisain/dmix/issues/656#issuecomment-65164338.

[avuton]

I've got lots of thoughts on this, but, apparently the app is still up. Their response to this is subpar bites tongue. I'm going to hold off any feature pushes for another week or so. If it gets kicked off the play store, I'm going to begin working on something else, non-Android, probably a new ng Java/MPD backend based off a lot of the work I've done and have queued up. I'm not sure money is going to help here; not speaking for @abarisain but free software means so much more than money for me. I'm not sure any protesting to Google is going to help (if protesting helped, the Nexus 6 sale wouldn't have gone so terribly after the nexus 4 and 5). I'm not really upset yet. I will reserve that for the actual play store removal.

[mariussturm]

A real shame! I love the app, great work guys!

[abarisain]

Thanks for your support !

Just like @avuton, I'm not spending much energy other than what I already did until the app is removed. We'll see when that happens, if it happens ! I don't want to get all upset for nothing. For the time being, 1.07 is rolled out, app is up, reviews are amazingly supportive.

@Jarige I'll send a mail to Google. It's worth a shot.

@rompolompo Thanks, really, but I don't think I will accept donations anymore. Just like @avuton says, I'm not in it for the money, but for the love of well crafted free software.
If MPDroid was here for money, you would have known already ;) Of course, I really appreciate the intention. Thanks again !

I noticed that the (Google provided) headphones icon is CC by Attribution. My mistake here : forgot to give proper attribution. I'll fix that soonish. I really doubt that is why the app got pulled though.

About album art download: This could be it. If Google tells me to remove this, we can make this part modular and stash it into another APK, distributed in another way.
About the "Droid" name: We need a better name anyway. I've grown tired of MPDroid ;)

If the Play Store kicks off MPDroid, like they said they will (I really have no idea of what is happening), I'll probably lack the motivation to continue it, like I explained in my "blog post". It isn't that bad : as you may have noticed, @avuton is doing most of the code these days, I barely find enough time to work on MPDroid. When I do, motivation often lack, because I want to work on something new, something light that does not have a 5 year old codebase. All in all, the Play Store removal is maybe the spark that the project needed to be taken care of by somebody else who is motivated to make MPDroid grow faster than it does (well, its core is changing fast, just not because of me ;) )
I must admit that all the love and support expressed to MPDroid always surprised me and is what kept me going for all these years.

Whatever happens, if Android is abandoned, I believe that you'll be left with a great app. Sure it has some bugs, but I think it's working great and doesn't even look that bad. MPD's API is unlikely to ever break compatibility, so MPDroid will not stop We're, and always have been, open source. Worst case scenario : someone will pick up where we left off. Just like I did with PMix :)

If we really want to live on, we don't need the Play Store : I can bake an updater, make my own F-Droid repo, etc ... It just sucks for discoverability, and MPDroid had a modest, but steady track record :

These two graphs are respectively : Total active installs (phones) and Total installs (users). The second one does not go down when users uninstall MPDroid.

[hurzl]

Silly idea: it is too much looking like the Apollo player, they (stupid bots) think it is something like Apollo ... Apollo downloads covers, too, btw.

[ZenithDK]

Like all the others have said I am really surprised by Google pulling the app.

Thanks for all your work guys, it's by far the best native player out there and I hope whatever comes from this will make the community stronger for it.

My hat's off to you all! Cheers....

[kittybuttontin]

Can't believe the response from Google which seems almost sinister. Why can't they just explain exactly what the problem is?

Thanks to all the devs for their work in making MPDroid the best mpd client I've used on any platform. I hope the project can continue in some form.

[Yetangitu]

The solution is simple: anyone interested in learning the reason(s) for the pending removal should ask Google. First by email, then by telephone. It should not be that hard for them to explain their reasoning behind these actions.

[Yetangitu]

As to continuing if/when Google really kicks off MPDroid, I'd say the FDroid store is a good way to do so. Incidentally, this is where I get MPDroid from as I do not have any Google apps nor services on my devices. It works OK and saves quite a bit of battery by virtue of not running all sorts of spurious services in the background.

[Jarige]

I called Google just now. The guy in the callcenter first tried finding out why the app got removed, he told me to contact the developer, but I said I did and he doesn't know what went wrong. Then he went to the app department to ask, but they do not have access to finding out why an app got removed unless it is actually removed from the Play store (which it is not at the moment). So that was quite useless so far. Then I asked whether I could file a complaint to hopefully keep this app from being removed. He said he would file a complaint himself and then forward it to the correct department. If there were to be a response from that department he would forward that to me. He couldn't say whether it would help or not (obviously) but I think it's worth a shot. So I agreed to that, let's hope it makes a difference. I suggest others to call as well. Personally I prefer actually talking to call center people over sending an e-mail because they cannot ignore certain questions that way.

[ZenithDK]

@Jarige That sounds like a good approach. We'll keep our fingers crossed, keep us posted. I contacted the Danish support, and they are forwarding me to the english developer support on e-mail - so we'll see where that takes us.

[abarisain]

Thanks again to all of you, it means a lot !

For now, I'll wait until Google has pulled the app before doing anything else that I have already done. Wait & see.

@Jarige Thanks ! It's still heartwarming that some employees tried to do what they can to reply to you :)

@Yetangitu I already contacted F-Droid and asked them how to make them update MPDroid. Worst case scenario, I'll make my own F-Droid repository (with betas and nightlies, yay)

@hurzl Maybe. I know that some players got in trouble due to lyrics, so I stayed far away from them. If only the bots told me what they didn't like ...

Whatever happens, MPDroid is free software. It does not depend on Play Services (even if I considered that for a while, I will not do that again), and will always be installable while Android has a "Allow unknown sources" checkbox.

[ACXgit]

It's a shame to see such things happen, and even worst to not receive any plausible reason to justify that behaviour. Such kind of decisions should always be motivated clearly, or they could seem to be done in bad faith. If there is a real copyright issue they should tell it and let you fix it, because removing it from the store gets the only result of damaging users. If there is a way to make them hear our voice let us know, you'll have our support.

[hillbicks]

This is just silly! But I'd also like to express my thanks and gratitude for your work on this. Let's hope they snap back into reality

[lite72]

What a big mistake from Google. Please don't stop developing this wonderful app! This is simply the best mpd/mopidy client for Android.

[Jarige]

I haven't heard from Google yet, sadly. I actually don't really expect them to come with a message. @abarisain I love your app man, it's simply the best of it's kind. I hope you'll not stop developing this app, and will try what you can to keep this from happening. How many days are left?

[abarisain]

5, I think.

[philchand]

This is mad, and very annoying that Google doesn't tell you why or what the offending issue is.

If you were making money from infringement I could understand it, but MPDroid has only cost the developers their time.

The Droid name part could be it, especially with the new Star wars movie coming out, there's money to be made and lawyers to be paid.

I came on the site to congratulate you all on 1.7, which is real nice. (I've found no regressions on my set-up). I had cloned the repository a couple of days ago, to see whats been going on, and I played around with it and thought this looks releasable. And the next day, I see an update on Play.

I assume the github repo will still continue?

[abarisain]

It probably will :)

Thanks for the kind words !

[eisnerd]

Wicked stats @abarisain! It really will be criminal if they go through with it. I like the other distribution channels, but so many people want MPDroid on Google Play.

[keaukraine]

This could be caused by name of app. Please try renaming it to something neutral, like "MPD client for Android". Also, there's a site mpdroid and they might have flagged app. More discussion with good cases and propositions on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/2o7ib2/google_has_threatened_to_remove_the_opensource/cmkglfy

[Jarige]

@abarisain I would suggest you to call Google support. Heck, they may not be the ones who can answer your questions, but they can try to put you in contact with those who can. And by doing this politely and stuff you can make a good and honest impression, showing that you are willing to change the app if they explain to you what needs to be changed. When I called I was just a customer, you are a developer though. Maybe you can achieve more. My guess is that many would appreciate you trying this. To make it easy, I googled the phone numbers for every country: https://support.google.com/googleplay/table/6068053?hl=en

[abarisain]

Since some people on reddit decided that I'm apparently hiding information, here is the original email for the sake of transparency : http://c.nlss.fr/image/1v123R010V2B

[Yetangitu]

Are they perchance simply complaining about the album art pictured on the Play store entry? It does show an image of some random album. The original email includes the phrase 'Your app and/or elements of its listing on Google Play...' and goes on listing things which could infringe, including images.

If this is the case, they sure have reached a new low but it would be easy to fix.

[bubbleguuum]

Probably due to album art in app screenshots (because Google). See:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/2o7ib2/google_has_threatened_to_remove_the_opensource/cmkyxp3

[abarisain]

I don't know if it's thanks to your help, reddit's visibility, one of the users who contacted me by email, or a kind Googler who gave me a hand, but Google sent me (out of the blue) an email with more information and how to solve this. I will, of course, keep you updated.

If any one of you is making music and is willing to give me a license to use your name/songs/album art in my screenshots, please contact me. In the meantime, I'll kill the screenshots and add some generic ones while we take time to carefully make new ones.

Thanks for your support, I'm now working on the issues. Note that I'm considering a name change to drop the "droid" part. Not a light decision.

[ChaoticMind]

That's great to hear! Nice to see the how community got together and tried to help through different channels, too!

[ACXgit]

Great news :) So were the screenshots showing album art the main culprit?

[abarisain]

Yes they were.

[Jarige]

This is great news! :D I actually mentioned on the phone that you didn't know why your app would be removed, maybe that helped as well? I like to think it did xD BTW, isn't the music and the album art released under Creative Commons? That basically gives you the right to use the album art under a few conditions. Maybe if you can show that the album art is CC and you're keeping the conditions you can stop them from removing your app. The safer solution would be asking someone for permission indeed though :P

[burmar]

Ohhhh finally a good news. This is a great thing and hopefully things will be clarified. The name of the app it is no important as the app itself! Important is to keep it the best mpd player on the net.

[abarisain]

Thank you all for your support : It's because of you, and thanks to you, that MPDroid stayed on the store.

I'll update the app soon, in order to remove the popup blaming Google. I'll also update the blog post.
I guess I should thank them for reaching out to me even after the appeal got deined, but it was a hard week for me because their dev relations are bad : this could have easily been avoided. I believe the management is enforcing some policy, and even Googlers couldn't help me directly.

PS : It was the screenshots. I feel like I just played a game of cluedo.

[Jarige]

This is awesome! Congratulations! :D It's sad that you had to go through this, but at least you're still in the store. I'm happy for you, for me and for every other user of this app :) Also: keep up the good work, I love your app!