If I ask the app development company to host an app on their App store or their Google play store accounts, does this make them the legal owners of the app?
I want to stay the legal owner of the app. Does this affect my ownership rights by any means?
To ensure ownership of the App concept, IP and confidentiality:-
- Sign a IP rights document with the Dev Company.
- Sign a NDA with the Dev Company.
You might need more documents depending upon the laws of your country, so this step is not possible without consulting a lawyer.
Also, you need to ensure that:-
- You get all the source code with proper documentation.
- Also, make sure there are no encrypted files/libraries present in the source code.
Since, 2013 Apps can also be transferred between accounts if you happen to create one later.
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On the flip side
Why do you want to get into such a mess?
It is easy and cheap to create a Developer account. Just some straighforward paperwork and not more that 100$ for each platform (compared to the amount of resources you have already invested in creating the App)
Once you have the account, give the Dev company Developer access to your account. They can upload the App to your account with it. Once this is done and you have also ensured the you have all the source code, you have no dependencies on the Dev company.
Related
I loaded a manifest file at server and I want to know can other people download application and use it or without payment account it's impossible.
I mean distribute by url.
Example
itms-services://?action=download-manifest&url=https://base.cloudfront.net/ios/test/manifest.plist
I want to know can other people download application and use it or without payment account it's impossible
Yes, it's impossible. The ability to distribute apps is one of the main things that a paid developer account buys you.
I have an application for various platforms. Let them be iOS, Android and Windows. In order to use a app, a monthly fee needs to be paid, but it just needs to be paid once in order to use all platforms. It is the same as with Spotify, so by paying once, every platform can be used.
According to the guidelines of Google and Apple, I need to offer In-App Purchases for the monthly fee. The system is connected to user accounts, which are managed by a server, which is in my control. I am storing the subscription data of users, so if a user uses the In-App Purchases on iOS, the information is transmitted to the central server in order to unlock the Android-App as well (in case it has been paid on another platform already)
The problem is the following scenario:
A user has a valid subscription which has been payed via Google Play. The iOS and Windows apps are unlocked as well. Now the user uninstalls the Android app, goes to the Google Play website and cancels the subscription. In the current scenario, I am not able to detect this and the subscription will be valid for all other platforms.
The question is:
Is there any pattern to circumvent this problem? Spotify and co are solving this issue as well, so there must be a solution for this
Well, the server that handles the authorization of the user (that is, your server) should query the Google Subscription API, to check if the current subscription is still valid. Each SubscriptionPurchase Resource contains information about when the subscription expires.
(see https://developers.google.com/android-publisher/api-ref/purchases/subscriptions)
For Apple, the same stuff applies: You will get a receipt, and with that receipt, you can query the server at any time to check if that subscription is still valid.
There is a slide which summarizes these points and the pitfalls very well: https://speakerdeck.com/rosapolis/the-recurring-nightmare-cross-platform-in-app-subscription-purchases
Bottom line: You won't be able to make that happen without a server that does the communication between the two stores. It comes with issues, though, as the slide shows.
Bonus: The talk from which the slides are taken is also on Youtube
I am developing an app that uses Directory API to create user accounts within Google Apps for Work. I have been testing this on a Free (legacy) account but now I need to test adding and removing domains, which Free account doesn't support. I don't want to get a paid account just yet and rack up a huge bill by adding and removing accounts in testing. I also don't see a way to get a sandbox/developer account to test this out. How can I accomplish this?
I am trying to recruit some beta testers for an app of mine using Test Flight. None of the testers will be in house employees or anything like that- just some folks I know who would like to help test my app (I'm a hobbyist and don't have any employees anyways).
When I went to add somme users in ITC for test flight it made me assign them a role. The only role that made sense to me was "Technical". However, I am worried that assigning somebody I don't know well the technical role will allow them to make changes to my app descriptions, reject or submit binaries, and things like that.
Is that something I need to worry about? Is there a way to assign a user the role of JUST tester without giving them access to my apps via ITC?
Apple's documentation does not seem to explicitly state what users with various roles can do.
No, this isn't really safe, and it's not a good idea to give the 'Technical' role in iTunesConnect to someone you don't fully trust.
The iOS 8 TestFlight system has a way to setup external testers, see the "External testers" section on https://developer.apple.com/app-store/Testflight/
The downside is that your app has to go through the review team each time you make any major changes before it goes to external testers (hence if the tester is really a close part of your team it is still advantageous to add them as an internal tester by giving them the technical role). The reviews don't take as long as a normal App Store review.
Alternatives (that don't involve a review) are Crashlytics Beta Distribution (owned by Twitter) or HockeyApp (owned by Microsoft). There are other services too, or you can host IPAs on your own website (using the mechanism designed for enterprise apps) but generally doing this means you miss out on other features you get when using the more integrated solutions.
Short answer: no. It is not safe to add testers with technical role.
Long answer:
According to iTunes Connect, the user must have Admin or Tech.
After reading the comments, I will complete my answer with this.
There are Internal Testers and External Testers.
External Testers are not available as of yet (see https://developer.apple.com/app-store/Testflight/).
Only Internal Testers are allowed by now (which means, your testers WILL be able to change your apps).
Since you need the user to have minimum rights, you should add the user as Technical (the less risky, but still dangerous).
I see that there is a checkbox in iTC that lets you enable the Internal Tester role:
What permissions will the users have? Theoretically, they will only have access to the beta versions (but that is a guess, since I have not tried it yet). You could create an account for a fake internal tester and check that you can't modify apps with that role.
A technical users will have access to the 'My Apps' section of iTunes Connect. This means that they can change the description of an app in the app store, update prices and even remove an app from sale.
There is no way to have a user with just an 'internal tester' role. That's what external testers are for.
It is possible to grant someone access to test as an internal tester, but not have them be able to log into iTunes Connect.
Create an iTunes Connect User with the "Technical" role with an email address that they can receive. Then have them accept it with a different Apple ID.
As long as they cannot log into iTunes Connect with the email address you added as the "Technical" user, they cannot misbehave.
Is it possible to change ownership of a Heroku add-on? If so, how can we do that? In fact, I want to move an add-on from one Heroku account to another.
Let me elaborate my scenario a bit more to be clear.
I created an add-on with my test provider acount. Is there any way that I can delete the add-on from my test account and create the add-on with the same name with my official provider account? As a matter of fact, there is nothing about deleting the add-on or moving it under a different account in the Provider's documentation.
A Google search lead me to this support page, which says
This currently depends on whether or not the app has any paid resources associated with it.
For an app with no paid resources, you can use "heroku sharing:transfer" from the command line to transfer the app to a new owner.
For an app with paid resources, you have two options.
1) Remove all paid resources, transfer the app like a free app, then have the new owner re-add the paid resources.
2) Both the old and new owners should file a support tickets at http://support.heroku.com authorizing the transfer and with the new owner accepting charges for the app.
Also check out the Transferring apps and Collaborating with Others articles on Heroku's Dev Centre.
Since you're talking about ownership of add-ons as an add-on provider and not just ownership of your heroku app, I would say you should probably contact the heroku add-on support team via email. See this page here for an email address. Hopefully as an add-on provider if you submit a help ticket they'll be able to help you as well.