Hi. On 20.04.2014, at 17:09 , Aaron Raimist <[email protected]> wrote: > Are there any plans of an iOS equivalent of > MozStubmler<https://github.com/mozilla/MozStumbler>? > Does anyone have a prototype or any concept of if its possible?
I don’t know of anyone working on an iOS version and there’s no plan to have a paid contributor work on this. > Every time I bring this up someone mentions that Apple would not allow this > kind of app on the App Store which I totally understand but the Android app > is not on the Play Store. While MozStumbler is currently not in the Play Store, it is already in the f-droid catalog. And there is no technical or legal reason why it couldn’t be on the Play Store. We decided to wait with the Play Store submission until the app looks more like a Mozilla project (the UI is a bit simple) and we found a way to address any possible user confusion. We don’t want to end up with Play Store users searching for Mozilla in the store, finding MozStumbler instead of Firefox for Android (Fennec) and turning away as “this browser doesn’t work”. Developing for Android has a couple other advantages. It can (soon) share code between MozStumbler and Fennec. And Android devices are much more common around the world, especially in those emerging markets where Firefox OS devices are launching. Not to mention that we already have Android knowledge in the community and very little experience with iOS. > Why couldn't it just be an app that you needed > Xcode to compile/install? As Hubert mentions an XCode license isn’t enough, but you also need a paid iOS program membership to install apps on iOS devices. The legal text of the program membership is rather long and puts limits on the way you can distribute apps. As a stumbler app needs to use private API’s, it cannot be distributed via the app or business volume stores. The restrictions on self-signed / outside distributed apps are a bit vague. I think it could work if each user has his own iOS program membership and self-signs his or her build. If one developer wants to hand out signed builds, that person has to manage certificates for each end-user, which seems rather tedious. If it’s even legal isn’t really clear to me, as the legal text assumes a close relationship between the developer and user in this scenario (for example co-workers, teachers/students). In addition to all of this, there are also reports that you can no longer access the relevant API’s unless you hack your app entitlements or have a jailbroken device. Both of those are likely in violation of the legal agreements, at least in most countries. With all those hurdles, it seems it’s extremely difficult if at all legally possible to have this kind of app on iOS. We certainly won’t prevent anyone from investigating this on their own, but it seems time and energy is better spent elsewhere. Cheers, Hanno _______________________________________________ dev-geolocation mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-geolocation
