[prof18]

QR Reader are load of everything. I went mad to find one a decent one for my parents’ android phone and apparently it doesn’t exists. So in a weekend I’ve created one without any kind of tracking, ads, permission, whatever. Here it is if you guys need one ->

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.prof18.sec...

[moritonal]

But this is the classic cycle don't you see? They almost always start as "here is an app I threw together, no ads, don't be evil".

But then a lot of people like your app, and ask for a small extra feature. You support it, and then get a bit annoyed by all the features people are asking for. Then you have to update it for the latest release... then suddenly fix it when some obscure version of Android breaks on it.

Then someone offers you £60k for a small ad no-one will even see and you think.. don't you deserve a bit of credit?

Maybe you'll be the good one who doesn't take it, but the free model is generally unsustainable.

[kuschku]

That’s why you should try to use apps from reputable developers, who’ve already had countless such offers and refused them all.

The usual "400$/month per 1k users" stuff, just integrate an ad network is common, but sometimes as dev you even get offers like "we hire you, with a contract, you can’t be fired, legally you’re a consultant to us for 2 years, at a few hours per week officially, for a silicon valley wage, unofficially you just don’t do anything and collect but we get full control over your apps".

Personally I’ve had quite a few such offers, and I’ve rejected them in the past and will also reject them in the future

Trust devs who’ve proven themselves :)

[prof18]

I'll never do that, because I've done it without any kind of profit in mind. I've done it just to help people and the community.

I think that if the app is open source, it's harder to hide such behavior.

[welly]

If the OP open sources his QR code reader app then the "free" model is absolutely sustainable.

[e12e]

The op did (it's in the description on the app store, but was unfortunately (considering the context and audience) left out from they comment:

https://github.com/prof18/Secure-QR-Reader

[aardshark]

It doesn't exist? What were your feature requirements?

You wrote a wrapper around ZXing, which already has an official app as well as simple variations of that app from the ZXing team. That app is open source and ad-free.

There are already many similar wrappers around ZXing on the Play Store.

So what does your app do (or not) that makes it special?

[nonsapreiche]

I find https://appsco.pe/app/qrsnapper a simple pwa that works fine for me

[rjmunro]

Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/927/

But in this case, there is only one standard, and lots of imitators: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.zxi...

But fallout from the bad app, or possibly deliberate actions by the malware maker have caused hundreds of bad reviews. It might be that removing the malware app from the store means people search for Barcode Scanner, find ZXing instead of the bad one, then post their bad review there. Or maybe the bad app is deliberately telling people "Click here to review the app", and pointing to the wrong app.

There's also reports of some sort of malware doing fishy things with intents to make it look like the ZXing software is bad https://github.com/zxing/zxing/issues/1345#issuecomment-7590....

I'd like to see a proper investigation by someone at Google Play. The original Barcode scanner is not needed for QR codes any more - almost any camera app will recognise those, as will Google's lens application, but it is still useful for scanning other barcode formats and for generating barcodes by sharing data with it from other apps, without needing to upload to a server or anything.

[TrianguloY]

4M for just a scanner??

I appreciate the app but...don't you think that's too much?

[ant6n]

Nice. Once you have a million users, are you open to selling it? ;-)

[prof18]

Nope. Because I truly believe in community and open source. I'd not be able to sleep on night and I'd prefer to shut it down rather than selling.