Raccoon Onyxbits

> the only way to get apps from the Google Play Store There's also Raccon: https://raccoon.onyxbits.de/

https://raccoon.onyxbits.de/blog/reactions-bugreport-free-support/ was his followup. His software must be awfully solid if he never learns about real, important bugs from random non-paying users.

followup: https://raccoon.onyxbits.de/blog/reactions-bugreport-free-support/

Fun writing. Yeah, kind of strange to charge for a bug. If I were doing it, I would probably have a 'bug dropbox' but I haven't run a one-person open-source project and met reality head-on. I read his other articles, and loved this quote: Back in the day, multitasking on Windows meant: being able to crash two programs simultaneously. https://raccoon.onyxbits.de/blog/why-not-use-github/

Running Raccoon as a one one show: https://raccoon.onyxbits.de/ It's a privacy solution that allows you to download apps from Google Play without having Big G claw into your smartphone. The tech stack is quite extensive: Java for the application itself (Eclipse toolchain), LAMP for hosting the billing system (build on php, bootstrap and fatfree) and the website (build with Hugo using bootstrap). COVID-19 hit hard. Even though I see more downloads, people seem to have become cautious with spending money.

Or you can just install Yalp Store from F-Droid (https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=com.github.yeriomin.yalpst… and download the apps from the Google Play Store directly to your device. You can also easily update your apps with Yalp Store. Another possibility is to use the Java software Raccoon on your Desktop, available here: http://raccoon.onyxbits.de/

Once you take money, you are running a business (even if you mislabel the money as a donation). That means having to register with the tax authorities, adding a ton of accounting related overhead and very likely spending money on all of that overhead (e.g. when hiring an accountant to offload some of the overhead). At some point you realize that you have to ramp your business up, just so it pays for the cost of accepting money. Then it's no longer a side project. I'll just leave this here: https://raccoon.onyxbits.de/blog/software-development-cost/

I know of many such stores. Usually they are proxies: They download the app from the Google store, you download it from the proxy. The question is, how do you know they haven't inserted malware? It seems like a very obvious vector for attack. You could authenticate signatures or hashes, but where do you find the authoritative signature/hash? For those interested in taking a shot at using these services, here are a couple of the more credible ones I've run into in the last couple years (I haven't used them in at least 6 months, so possibly their status has changed). Use at your own risk!: - APK Downloader: By someone on XDA-forums, a leading Android dev community. It comes in several versions and forks by other XDA members, and for several platforms. I don't have time to sort them out now, sorry. Beware of malware-infected hosted implementations. http://codekiem.com/2014/08/07/official-apk-downloader-v2-download-apk… / http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1515021 http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1809458 https://github.com/Lekensteyn/apk-downloader - Racoon: Desktop OS client for Play Store (along with its Github and XDA links) http://raccoon.onyxbits.de / https://github.com/onyxbits/Raccoon / https://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2772436