The developer of open-source email client FairEmail has pulled all of its apps from Google Play and announced that it will stop development.
FairEmail was a popular email client for Google’s Android operating system that was free. It was privacy-friendly, had no limitations when it came to email accounts users could set up in the app, supported unified inbox, chat thread, two-way sync, OpenPGP support, and more.
Marcel Bokhorst, the developer of the application, announced major changes to the project yesterday on XDA Developers. According to the forum thread, Bokhorst has removed all of its apps from the Google Play Store and announced that it will stop supporting and maintaining them.
Earlier that week, Bokhorst received a policy violation email from Google stating that Google believed the FairEmail app was spyware. The full statement has not been released, but Bokhorst believes Google may have misinterpreted the use of favicons in the app. He resubmitted a new version of the app that had its use of favicons removed.
The call he received in response “resulted in a standard response”. Although the content of the answer is unclear, it appears to be a generic answer that has frustrated Google Play Store developers for a long time.
Bokhorst has decided to remove the app and all of its other apps from the Google Play Store. The apps will no longer be maintained and supported according to the information.
Other factors played a role in Bokhorst’s decision, including the gap between answering thousands of support questions per month and app revenue, and the inability to do anything about the critics. unfair in the Google Play Store.
He considered keeping the apps on GitHub, but that would result in a 98% audience loss.
GitHub repositories are always available but archived. Users can always download the latest version of the repository and install it on their devices. Unsupported apps will continue to work, but there will be no future updates. Eventually, apps may stop working altogether.
The application could be forked and another developer could take over the development of the application. Whether this is a realistic scenario remains to be seen, given that the Google Play Store policy violation still looms over the app.
Closing words
FairEmail users can continue to use the app for the foreseeable future, even though it’s pulled from Google Play. The developer of FairEmail is not the first to have been confronted with the often hostile nature of the process of restoring Google Play Store policy violations.
If you are looking for another email client, you can try K-9 Mailit is also open source.
It’s not a good day for Android apps, the developer of Total Commander was forced by Google to remove the ability to install APKs from the file manager.
Now you: have you used FairEmail?
Summary
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FairEmail developer calls it and pulls apps from Google Play
The description
The developer of open-source email client FairEmail has pulled all of its apps from Google Play and announced that it will stop development.
Author
Martin Brinkman
Editor
Ghacks Technology News
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