App Lounge forces users to accept Google's Terms - give users a choice!

/e/OS Smartphone Operating System Request a Feature
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After having upgraded to /e/OS 1.0 I see: there is a dark shadow hanging over the project:

Using “App Lounge” requires me to accept TERMS AND CONDITIONS.

I appreciate that these terms are obviously designed to be as human readable as possible. They stress importance of privacy as well. And although they have not been shown in the system language (but english instead of german) I understood most of it.

But this is a threatening step back into the hell, we have been going to escape from.

What we have had before App-Lounge has been redesigned:

  • an app store empowering me to choose: FOSS or unfree
  • an app store with root access, so that it can care for automatic updates, if I want it to do so
  • an app store free of the legal terms wall, which urge mankind to become zombie-like I-accept-because-i-cannot-read-all-this-stuff-machines

Now

  • I MUST accept the terms in order to use App Lounge
  • the terms include my acceptance of Google’s terms for their Play Store

What I understand is, that there might have been legal circumstances, that made e.foundation consider to switch form the former repository to Google Play. But I regret that massively.

What I do not understand is: Why isn’t there an option at least to choose to stay free and independent? E.g. saying: If you reject the terms of google, then you are limited to FOSS or f-droid resources. There could be even more options as I could imagine.

To be clear: It is NOT an option just to use Aurora or F-Droid instead, since these are not able to perform unattended updates. Unfortunately F-Droid is not even able to trigger complete updates on all (or many) apps at once manually. Neither is Aurora. But unattended upgrades is essential in certain contexts.

An example: I am the internal data protection officer at my employer. I really have been keen of finding a mobile device operating system that fits my needs (degoogled at foremost) and gives our users the feeling of “it works”. /e/OS has been my biggest hope.

So at the moment I am irritated and disappointed:

Where do we go now?

Is this decision on App Lounge’s design revertible?

Martin

2

If I am getting your gist correctly, these are the problematic paragraphs?
(citing the App Lounge ToS:)

Furthermore, Users declare that they have read the Terms and Conditions of the Google Play Store as indicated at: https://play.google.com/

They also declare to respect them, when exercising their right to benefit from a service that is not coupled with the collection and processing of their personal data, as well as when exercising their right to the portability of their data.

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Is anyone familiar with the Terms of Service (ToS) of the Aurora Store (a proxy / frontend of the G. Play Store)?

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You’ve got it exactly! Thanks for specifying this here :slightly_smiling_face:

1 Like
5

ToS of Aurora can bei found here:

https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AuroraStore/-/blob/master/TermsOfService.md

No reference to Google ToS as far as I can see, but quite a bit of legal stuff anyway :thinking:

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“We provide users with two major third party services. Your use of the Service may also include the use of applications that are developed or owned by a third party. Your use of such third party applications, websites, and services is governed by that party’s own terms of service or privacy policies. We encourage you to read the terms and conditions and privacy policy of any third party application, website or service that you visit or use.”

(Highlighting by me. Since the same ToS can be found on the website for Aurora Store and Aurora Droid, I would assume the “two major third party services” are the Google Play Store and F-Droid.)

Perhaps you might want to track Gaël’s mention of “a ‘skip’ option to the google login view” here and add your voice …

https://gitlab.e.foundation/e/backlog/-/issues/5214#note_187675

3 Likes
7

Your’re right, AnotherElk, thanks for the clarification.

At least it sounds different. Aurora’s ToS encourage me to read the third party’s terms, App Lounge enforces to consent to Google’s ToS. Perhaps this is what rises my resistance.

And thank you very much for the link to the discussion of a ‘skip option’ - I’m going to contribute there.

1 Like