Topic on Talk:Wikipedia.org add mobile app badges/Flow

"What does this mean? Is it going to link directly to apk and ipa files? I assume you mean Google Play or the iOS App Store here?"

@Legoktm I hope you don't mind, but I moved your question here to better respond. I see your concerns on linking to the stores. Thank you for adding them to the page. As for where we link to - Yes, the stores did seam the most logical to the Portal team. Especially for non-technical folk who are OK with using apps stores.

I though about alternatives to alleviate your concerns. At the moment I can't come up with a good one. I thought maybe having a link to other locations like List of Wikipedia mobile apps? But that only increases the taps to get to the app and that page, in turn, links to the stores. :/

Loading an app outside of the app store in iOS is a pain if not near impossible. I'm not sure there is a way to deploy an .ipa with the number of current Wikipedia mobile app users. I can't speak to the process on Android.

Regardless, if we add a link to the mobile apps, linking anywhere but to the app stores would reduce the amount of people who could actually get the app running, blah, blah, blah. I'm sure you already know this. :)

I could be wrong, but I think encouraging people to bypass the stores would have the side effect of having them not be notified about updates (including security updates). If we're going to have non-technical people use the apps, I think we really do want them to use a store.

Maybe we could offer f-droid as an option for android users?

Are you sure that updates don't appear on apps when installed from outside the official app store?

Technically speaking, it's certainly possible for an app to "self-update" by downloading and installing updates periodically on its own, but most (including us) don't do this because it violates the Google Play terms of service and will get an app banned from the app store. (At least that's my understanding; I haven't looked it up.)

I think, like Google Play, F-Droid sends push notifications when updates are available, but to be honest I'm not 100% sure about that. (I tend to keep what's installed on my phone to a minimum.) If you load an APK directly from our servers, the only update notification you get is via an announcement on the mobile-l email list.

I just noticed that there are legitimate security concerns about f-droid, so I withdraw that suggestion.

Like what? I could just as easily say there are significantly bigger and just as legitimate privacy concerns about Apple and Google.

F-droid is definitely an improvement on the privacy and open source transparency fronts.

My initial reaction was based on information in the enwiki article on f-droid. Now that I have done more reading, it seems that there were legitimate security concerns in 2013, but that they were apparently all resolved by 2015. Assuming the security issues were actually resolved, I don't see a problem supporting f-droid as an option.

@MHolloway (WMF) I flipped a coin and answered here instead of replying to your version of the same question.

Lengthy/nerdy discussion starting in 2013 and ending in 2015: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/127

Most folks generally go to the google or apple store to get the apps that they're interested in which are verified virus free and also have the ability to get notifications of updates easily. Obviously, there are many other people that would rather bypass those stores (even for a free download) but I'm not sure that the Wikipedia Apps Team have the ability and/or time to create a separate download that can be loaded onto a mobile device.

+1 @DTankersley (WMF). People who prefer apps will likely go looking for them in the app stores - I think we should meet our users where they are to provide them the best service we can.

My personal preference would be at least to offer an F-Droid link as an option alongside Google Play. Based on past pageview statistics I wouldn't expect many to avail themselves of this option, but it seems to me there are important affinities between the free knowledge and free software movements, and free software is important to many of our developers and community members (myself included).

@KSmith (WMF) Are there security concerns specific to F-Droid that you're seeing, or are you talking generally about the risk involved in installing apps without the benefit of Google's malware scanning? FWIW I'm comfortable having F-Droid installed on my personal devices.

Reading this thread again, I'm not sure everyone is aware, so just to be clear, we already offer the Android app in F-Droid (and at https://releases.wikimedia.org/mobile/android/wikipedia/) in addition to the Google Play store.

I do think, as someone mentioned elsewhere, that we'd want to be in contact with F-Droid before putting up a link to avoid the possibility of overloading them with unexpected traffic.