CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidgoogle-play
panarama
panarama

Reputation: 81

Public alpha/beta testing on google play - as benign as it sounds?

You provide your app - to which you probably devoted a lot of time/energy/money - to be tested by strangers. If they find it impressive, what will prevent them from cloning your app and releasing it before you get yours out of the beta?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 50

Answers (1)

Nick Fortescue
Nick Fortescue

Reputation: 13836

Your question has two parts:

  • how do I protect my idea during beta testing?
  • how do I protect my code during beta testing?

The first question isn't really a programming question, it is more a business question. How do you stop someone seeing your idea and writing a clone themself. There are basically two answers. The first is legal: use whatever legal means are available in your jurisdiction (Trademark, copyright, patent) and enforce it legally. The second is strategic: have a strategy that makes your idea difficult to copy. One way is solve a problem so difficult that no-one can do it as well as you (like Google with websearch). Another is to take advantage of network effects - like Facebook a social media platform is only valuable if users are there.

The second question is more applicable to StackOverflow. It has a few answers:

  • Google Play scans for pure copycat apps. If someone just extracts your app and re-signs it it will get detected and the developer copying it get banned
  • Google offer a "License Verification Library" (LVL) to detect if your app has been installed from somewhere other than Google Play
  • Google offers the SafetyNet attestation API to let you check if your app has been signed by a different key

Upvotes: 1

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