The topic of the lack of AnkiWeb developments compared to Anki Desktop and AnkiDroid has long been a discussion among the Anki community. Consequently, I was thinking of creating my own publicly accessible web server that would effectively do what AnkiWeb was doing except with a cleaner UI and possibly additional features only available on the Desktop Anki App or Ankidroid.
Is this a feasible? Are there any legal considerations? Has this already been done or is being developed? What way would it be best to going about developing such an app?
Right now I’m thinking of using Anki’s self-hosted sync server capabilities docs (dot) ankiweb.net/sync-server.html and then make a public server from there.
Official Anki is important for the Anki ecosystem, they depend on AnkiMobile revenue for iphone and ipad. AnkiWeb’s alternative server is likely to be a competitor to Ankimobile, so I think there will be no support from the Anki community, many Anki users dislike apps like Copycat.
I guess most users don’t care as they use the apps. There seems to be some usage where own devices can’t be used (schools) or aren‘t affordable.
It is a major undertaking. It requires a lot of resources (time, money, experience) to build and run such a service and as a hosting provider you will have to deal with everything that is related to hosting (misuse by users, take down request, legal frameworks for collecting and processing user data, scalability …). This will cost money, so you have to put a price tag on it, somehow becoming a competitor to the official Anki ecosystem like a lot of copycat solutions have done before regarding mobile apps. This is not desirable for everyone who benefits from the status quo (literally everyone).
I’m on agreement with what everyone is saying that this will be a competitor if it includes the app-specific features. However, if it’s providing syncing and deck-sharing services I think that’s probably fine.
