Comment by KPGv2
5 days ago
> The bottom line is that Anki's lawyers messed up.
Anki and Ankidroid are not the same entity and they have different owners, if you want to call it that.
Anki is owned by Nicholas Flint, a physician who sells med school-related decks online under the name AnKing, which controls Ankihub, which now controls Anki after the original founder (Damien Elmes) gave them control about six months ago.
Ankidroid is a non-profit project that arose when there was only an iPhone mobile version of Anki. Completely unrelated to Anki except that it was blessed by the original creator of Anki.
It's also just some nerd programmers who ported Anki to run on Android. It's not some org with a revenue stream and attorneys.
> Obviously we're all reading this expecting that Anki is a 501(c)(3) charity
No, no one is reading it thinking that Anki is a charity.
Anyway, when you are going to harp on about HN not caring about the minutiae of tax policy, you should make sure you understand that you're talking about two unrelated entities run by different people as if they were the same entity.
> Anki and Ankidroid are not the same entity
So... why is one soliciting donations on behalf of the other?! My Fraud Meter is rising, not falling here.
> It's also just some nerd programmers who ported Anki to run on Android. It's not some org with a revenue stream and attorneys.
"Just Some Nerd Programmers" don't, very obviously, have standing to solicit tax exempt donations. Rising further still...
I think a lot of people here are operating on the assumption that apps have the inherent right to ask for money on a proprietary platform that gives them a monetization path. They don't, on any such platform, and never have. There are specific carveouts allowed by the platform vendors for cases we all agree are valuable, like charitable donations. It's just really clear that Anki is playing games here and frankly I really doubt they qualify.
> So... why is one soliciting donations on behalf of the other?! My Fraud Meter is rising, not falling here.
It's not... AnkiDroid was soliciting donations to AnkiDroid, via OpenCollective, which essentially "owns" them financially, for the purpose of soliciting donations.
This is all explained very clearly in the linked GitHub issue:
> AnkiDroid's donations go to Open Source Collective, a US non-profit which acts as our fiscal host.
> AnkiDroid is the Anki client for Android, developed and maintained by volunteers. Nothing is sold in the app and our Open Collective is the sole source of funding for maintenance and development. AnkiDroid is independent from Anki, AnkiWeb, AnkiMobile, and AnkiHub.
While some confusion is understandable, continuing to press on about your "Fraud Meter" just puts egg on your face when you're misunderstanding things through multiple replies explaining them to you.
> I think a lot of people here are operating on the assumption that apps have the inherent right to ask for money on a proprietary platform that gives them a monetization path.
no one here thinks that there is an "inherent right" to ask for money on a proprietary platform. That's a strawman.
You're also still wrong about the nature of AnkiDroid, and it's making you look silly when you're so confident and rude about it.
> You're also still wrong about the nature of AnkiDroid
So were you though, if you're still standing by "just some nerd programmers". They want to take donations through an outside payment processor, which they simply can't do and you know it. Like, seriously, give me the one sentence summary of what Google is doing wrong here that wouldn't enable essentially arbitrary fraud.
Apps can't put up donation links except in extremely limited circumstances, and this isn't one. And, again, you know it.
Genuinely sorry for being rude, if this seems rude. Doesn't seem rude to me though in context. You were the one who started with the aggressive rhetoric ("harping on", yada yada). We're just flaming, things get hot.