this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2023
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Infinity, a lesser known open-source third-party Reddit app for Android, has announced that it will be switching to a subscription-only model. This would mean that the F-Droid version of the app will be delisted and the API key currently in the source code of the app will be removed. As of this post, the developer is currently not interested in converting Infinity into a Lemmy client, but encourages others to look into doing it themselves because of the app's open source nature.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

How is a FOSS project gonna enforce this? By providing only binaries on GPlay with the dev's API key, and then a free version for entering your own API?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It needs an API key to function so they’ll disable the old key and generate a new one which they’ll keep private.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

But couldn't someone hack the binary to extract the key and enter it into the free version? Sounds kinda risky.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You can do that on every single app, so no difference there.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They will not give you the real API key. Everything you request will go through their own server, that way they can also cache stuff globally.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That sounds quite unbelievable.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is a common approach if API access is paid. Not doing this is equivalent to lighting your money on fire because someone WILL extract your API key and start scraping.

[–] newIdentity 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's also quite common to have the key directly in the app like that's the case with twitch (I mean the desktop app) and Crunchyroll

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, but those are first party apps. Entirely different scenario.

[–] newIdentity 1 points 1 year ago

Not really. You can extract the key and use it in your application

[–] samick1 4 points 1 year ago

Reddit won't allow the dev to create an app where users can enter their own keys. So it will still be FOSS but you'd have to build it yourself with your own keys, if you can somehow obtain them. Thus there's no point in putting the app on F-Droid.