Copyright violation - Githubissues

Poussinou commented 7 years ago

Hi @moezbhatti

I found this app, this app, this app and also this one on the Google Play Store. This guys just took your source code, added some ads in it and put it on the Store, without warning this is free software... They does'nt respect the GPL v3 at all...

As you are the owner of the source code, please feel free to open a request to google here to remove the fake apps from the Store ;)

Don't forget to tell Google that:

The app is licensed under GNU GPL v3 license and this guys are violating it;
They are falsely claiming they made the app;
Provide a link to this repo and tell them this app is open-source;
Provide screenshots of your own app.

moezbhatti commented 7 years ago

Thanks for the heads up! I'll make sure to follow up about this

frogoscar commented 7 years ago

This proves Google Play's check system is just useless.

moezbhatti commented 7 years ago

One more Thanks to @m2ck for finding it

Poussinou commented 7 years ago

@moezbhatti I found another one here ! Can you report it?

Poussinou commented 7 years ago

Remove the screenshot of one the app, which is in fact a fork approved by the original author

moezbhatti commented 7 years ago

@Poussinou thanks for following up on that! This is something that I should have brought up as soon as this issue was created - I apologize for the lack of communication on my part

The developer does in fact have an agreement with me. He reached out shortly after QKSMS was open sourced in 2015, and asked for permission to use the code in his closed-source application. I negotiated a deal with him to allow him to use the code as-is in his app.

Aside from this, there was one other developer that I granted this permission for. However this was for an enterprise application and isn’t publicly available on the Play Store.

Again, sorry for not mentioning this earlier. If you have any other questions please let know!

Poussinou commented 7 years ago

Hum then if you have a deal with him, I'll remove his application from my list of copies of QKSMS, and also the screenshot above.

Do not apologize, it's your app and you communicate what you want when you want ;)

But please report the others copies, it will help me in my hunt for fake developers <3

Poussinou commented 6 years ago

@moezbhatti Two more here:

moezbhatti commented 6 years ago

Another one: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.extecitek.titrasms

Poussinou commented 6 years ago

Thanks for reporting 👍

Poussinou commented 6 years ago

We have another one here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.quick.sms.mms

moezbhatti commented 6 years ago

Another one - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.trentpierce.aurasms&hl=en_US

This one at least credits QKSMS and links to the original source, but it doesn't provide its own source, so it's still in violation of GPL

Poussinou commented 6 years ago

You found this app by chance?

moezbhatti commented 6 years ago

I have a daily email from mention.net which lets me know where people are mentioning QKSMS online - the app was part of that

moezbhatti commented 6 years ago

Two more

sm4rk0 commented 6 years ago

5,000,000+ installs for com.promessage.message !?

moezbhatti commented 6 years ago

@sm4rk0 yep. I checked out the app and it looks like they never even changed the email address for the MMS support.

Now I know where those 49,328 support emails came from...

Poussinou commented 5 years ago

Another one here ? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.messaging.quicksms

moezbhatti commented 5 years ago

Another one https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.messenger.vpsms.multi.theme&hl=en

Poussinou commented 5 years ago

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.message.smsmms

moezbhatti commented 4 years ago

This one seems to have customized their UI, but I'm receiving their support emails, so I think they may be using the QKSMS under the hood

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=messages.textnow.textting.free

Poussinou commented 4 years ago

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mindapps.smsgo