<rant>
It's a topic that has been bugging me in the past as its something that I have always wanted to do. But I can't for the reason that if I allow my source to be viewed and copied, it will inevitably end up on the web on some shady spam serving mirror. It will be patched to include malicious code. It will violate my users rights and privacy, and I cannot have that.
I have wanted to Open Source my Android Applications for a long, long time now. But what prevents me is the fact that if I create an project and host it at some Git*.com, I can be sure that there will be some kind of service which my rip my APK and charge users for it elsewhere, perhaps even on the Google Play Store. That doesn't sit well with me, as a random Joe could install this bootlegged application and not know what runs behind the scenes as long as it sort of works.
The problem will perhaps, never be solved. The current Google Play distribution model
relies on trust. You as the user must trust the developer to not be a
malicious, bad meaning person. You need to hope that the developer is competent, and able to design secure interfaces for your data. You place your full trust in the developer.
One can argue that 99.9% of people who use Android applications do not care, or know, or understand the importance of open sourcing code for programs. They don't know how to read, or understand code. Some struggle just to understand their own device for that matter. They don't care that they downloaded a questionable closed source rip-off because it works for them well enough. They don't know about the moral and ethical struggles behind development. They don't have the time to read over the entire source tree of systemd to see if it will work as a replacement init system. And frankly, they couldn't care less.
The sad truth of my (and many other developers') current situation is that the Android Market is the only reliable medium of application distribution. And the Android Market in its current state is not suitable for open source application distribution.
</rant>
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