I’m currently migrating parts of Ankidroid to Jetpack Compose and Material 3 Expressive. This is largely for the purpose of improving the user interface. Essentially, it’s a one-to-one replica, not intended to be a competing app, but simply a different version. My question is if I’m following all the terms of the license and have the Play Store upload free, keep the same support links directly to the AnkiDroid GitHub, would it be wrong/scummy to call it AnkiDroid Expressive?
The reason I want to upload it to the Play Store is so that updates are easier and it’s more accessible to my friends and family. As for why I don’t make a PR: the changes I’ve made lack certain functionality of the original, the diffs are too large, and they Ankidroid team has no plans that I know of for a complete migration.
It seems like an interesting project but if other developers were to do the same as you it doesn’t seem like a very good idea to me that there would be dozens of custom versions of AnkiDroid on the Play store. (I’m not related to official Anki or AnkiDroid.)
Google is a monstrous surveillance engine that collects and stores huge amounts of data on every user. Google Play is Google’s proprietary app store designed to abuse and mistreat users. To avoid exposing your users to Google’s malware and telemetry, upload your apps to https://f-droid.org/ or host a custom F‑Droid repository.
For the app name, choose something distinct like Onki (遠忌), Honki (本気), Aniki (兄貴), Genki (元気), Anpi (安否), Anzan (安産), or Fuan (不安).
probably cannot use the name AnkiDroid without a lot of backlash from the community,
probably cannot use the sync to ankiweb feature without dae’s permission,
and probably cannot link to AnkiDroids repos or even docs (mainly because your fork would be separate from the official AnkiDroid)
Edit: I’m also not related to the offical Anki or AnkiDroid (and I only ever directly contributed to Anki, meaning I do not know the AnkiDroid codebase at all)
I would be linking to their donate page, but any issues would be directed to my repo. Syncing is something I didn’t give enough thought to, good point. It seems the consensus is I should change the app name, thanks for replying everyone!
Regarding the other comment, I will upload to F-Droid too.
I wouldn’t worry about syncing with AnkiWeb. Anyone can write a program that syncs with AnkiWeb. People have even used AnkiWeb as a cloud-storage replacement. Since the fork of AnkiDroid behaves the same as the original, there’s no need to disable syncing.
As Danika_Dakika said as far as I know the official Anki prohibits unauthorized apps or tools from accessing the AnkiWeb servers under its Terms and Conditions, so far only AnkiDroid and AnkiUniversal are permitted.
This prohibition applies also to shared decks and add-ons so third parties cannot scraping shared decks from AnkiWeb or extract add-on code in bulk.
So I guess it depends on whether the forked AnkiDroid is the same as AnkiDroid or not. Personally I think forking for the purpose of developing or contributing to AnkiDroid seems fine, if separating from AnkiDroid I think it would become a different app.
Yeah, I sent Dae a message asking for permission. If he doesn’t want me to use the sync then I will keep it as a GitHub repo only and not publish to any app store.
You may access AnkiWeb directly through your browser, and through the synchronization functionality incorporated into the approved clients (Anki, AnkiMobile, AnkiDroid, and AnkiUniversal).
AnkiDroid is allowed. The app in question is just AnkiDroid with some UI changes. Besides, I doubt those rules can be effectively enforced.
Yes. But one could argue that a AnkiDroid Fork is separate from the approved AnkiDroid app. Lawers probably would argue this way.
Terms and conditions can be legally enforced. OP could get in legal troubles if they use the sync feature without permission. And dae would be fully eligible to press charges. If he would do it (or when, or under which circumstances) would be another question. But it’s best to stay on the safe side and just get permission or remove the sync with AnkiWeb in the Fork.
Recently official Anki seems to have become relatively strict about its trademarks. Around June of this year the official Anki registered Anki as a trademark, about 2 months later both of the notorious copycat apps changed their names.
many times when I lurked twitter, i’d see someone recommending Anki for language learning
the replies would ALWAYS be something like “which Anki app do I download?” or “which Anki app do you recommend?” – in other words, there were so many shitty copycats with ‘Anki’ in the name, that people thought ‘Anki’ was a category of apps and not the name of an app lol
What if this was just integrated into Ankidroid (with an option to toggle between interfaces), or just saved on github for anyone who’d like to use it (maybe name this apk a bit different so that one could install both the original Ankidroid and this fork)?
I’ve moved this to the AnkiDroid category to make it easier for the AnkiDroid developers to see. I think you need to ask for their opinions on this.
My take: the license allows you to do this, and if you’re using unmodified syncing code and not causing problems, syncing to AnkiWeb should be fine. But you also need to consider the user-confusion angle. We’re finally clearing up some of the copycats so that users can more clearly identify the app they need to download, and uploading a separate app that is also called AnkiDroid, with a separate support channel, is likely to cause confusion. I’d prefer you pick a different name that doesn’t include Anki in it (but can of course describe compatibility/the fact that it’s an AnkiDroid fork in the description).
