Thanks for answering, @yevhenii-kanivets – but why would all crash reports go to the developer console "anyway" if they are not there?

As for my reasoning: with sensitive data involved, one shouldn't use proprietary tools to send data to any third party. You'd have to trust a company that lives on the data of users not to include things you didn't even tell them. And especially "us tin foils" don't like that (Google) connection (on my Android devices, there aren't even Google Services or any other apps from the "Google Apps" package present for that very reason). F-Droid would plainly reject packaging any apps coming with such libraries, for good reasons.

I'm aware that the majority "out there" is of the opinion they've got "nothing to hide" and thus don't care (but ask them to hand over all their credentials (or just their unlocked device) to prove their "nothing to hide" and you will discover otherwise). Still, there are people who do care. They'd prefer a version without those "known problematic candidates" – especially ones shipping data to "known privacy offenders / big data collectors". We greatly appreciate our apps coming without them, and don't consider apps that include such.

There are several options for that. If you don't want to drop those proprietary components altogether, you could use a special build flavor (or build variant) to create a "free APK" to be shared here (or to be build by F-Droid even – I'd then volunteer to help getting it listed there if you want); ship that to us "tin foils" (via F-Droid or attaching it here to releases/ – in the latter case, I could take that APK into my repo for easy install/update on client devices), while keeping the "standard variant" for Playstore; both sides would be happy that way. Or you could replace proprietary analytics by privacy-friendly open-source ones, like ACRA, which even uses opt-in by default. Or mix both approaches (Crashlytics for Play Store, ACRA for the "tin foils build").

Going that path you could even underline your "privacy first" approach visibly. Putting it thick: "we replaced … for enhanced privacy …" – which would convincingly show that other than just putting "we take your privacy, seriously" statements, you really mean it 😉

Again, thanks for taking your time and considering! After all, it's a suggestion – I cannot expect you have to take it, but surely would very much appreciate if you did, whichever of the variants you chose.

Remove Crashlytics? #181

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