OsmAnd Anti-Features look scary

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Hi, OsmAnd seems to be a well-known FOSS app on F-droid. Using it first time I normally wouldn’t hesitate to install it, also because of its recommendations on various sites.

But Anti-Feature warnings look quite scary and have potential to shy away privacy-aware users:

image

Organic maps for example is free from anti-feature warnings (neglecting it is not completely congruent).

What I’d like to question:

  1. In practice, is the app’s privacy better than it reads from F-Droid standard text templates? OSMAnd’s free text sounds a bit more reasonable:

    Anti-Features:

    • NonFreeAssets - The prerecorded voices are under a non-free license.
    • NonFreeNet - May use maps and download images from non-free online services.
    • Tracking - a unique installation ID is sent alongside map download requests. See here.

  2. At developers and contributors: Is there an easy fix to make the app adhere more to F-Droid principles, so that it doesn’t scare potential userbase?

Best greetings

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Will answer just 1 part per my understanding.
These are generic templates and paint a picture for the user to take into to check the app and its policies, permissions etc before using it. If F-Droid would try and create templates for each and every stance based on every app the warning template becomes useless in reality. Hence these are kind of tags and warnings for individual to check before using anything.

Having said that, if there are any suggestions to make the templates better or improve upon, make more user friendly etc, it is welcome for sure. F-Droid and admins/maintainers/devs are all friendly and open to feedback and suggestions.

:slight_smile:

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Thanks for your answer.
(Regarding point 1) Yes I have one suggestion/question: Why is

This app tracks and reports your activity

displayed three times? Either reduce it to one or show detail infos, if each warning covers a different aspect. With status quo it looks like Sauron’s eye itself is on full-tracking mode :-).

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It being displayed multiple times is a known bug:

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@sene

Why is Tracking displayed three times?
With status quo it looks like Sauron’s eye itself is on full-tracking mode

By design, to make you look… trice :slight_smile:

At developers and contributors: Is there an easy fix to make the app adhere more to F-Droid principles, so that it doesn’t scare potential userbase?

This state is AFTER F-Droid contributors cleaned it up.

Scroll through: prebuild.sh · master · f-droid-mirrors / OsmAnd-submodules · GitLab to see what needs to be done to take it into this shape.

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It’s supposed to deter people who are more focussed on privacy. It’s not to scare them but to help them make an informed choice. An alternative is Organic Maps as you’ve identified. Use that.

Organic Maps Offline Hike, Bike, GPS Navigation (Open-source, community-driven maps for travelers, tourists, cyclists & hikers)

Or to encourage someone to write their own.

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