I disagree with the part of his post that reads: "First, to do a chargeback when you are buying software and or intellectual property rights is repugnant. Its something you can never give back. No matter what. It can never be deleted. And you know this when you are making the acquisition."
There is not other way to signal to the developer that the software is not what you thought it was. For instance, I purchased a note-taking app from the App Store last night that turned out to not be what I needed. There was no way of knowing this beforehand because there is no free version that I could test and pirating it would have been way more trouble than it's worth (plus, I'm not doing that anymore).
So, what's the reasonable solution? For physical goods, if I'm unhappy with the purchase, I can return the item and receive a refund. For software, there is no good return method.
Now, one could argue that it's only a $10 app, but that isn't the point. The point is that $10 paid for something that I don't want or need, and while $10 probably isn't much to me, it should not be yours because your product failed to meet my needs.
As for the rest of the post, the purchaser in that case was out of line. He'd bought the product, used it for a significant amount of time, and apparently gotten some value out of it. At that point, there should be no ability to return the item.
On Apptopia you don't buy apps, you buy all of the source code and distribution rights to an app. So in this case the buyer bought the previously closed-source code, took what he needed from it, and then filed a chargeback. That's much different than buying a packaged app for personal use from an App Store.
They should have stated a brief blurb about themselves in their blog post. Not knowing anything about Apptopia, I thought they released something this guy created on his own from scratch.
You make a really fair point. In fact, its why most really successful apps (and software companies in general) all have a free-to-paid model or some sort of trial basis.
With Apptopia, we build in a "Code Review" layer. So if you are concerned about the quality of the code you are buying we can dive as deep as you would like before the acquisition is final.
Also, all apps listed on Apptopia are currently on an app store (so all buyers can and should be testing the apps as a consumer, before acquiring it).
Either way, appreciate you getting involved in the conversation. Hope the code is of some value to you =)
I can only hope you will be improving the said 'Code Review' layer in the future. The 'app' in question is nothing more than a thin layer of badly written code wrapped around a 3rd party library (PhoneGap). It can be made into (and sold as) an indeterminate number of "<insert subject here> video player" "apps" just by changing the hardcoded search terms (affirmation also enforced by the fact that the /bin directory in the zip contains a 'motorsport video player.apk' "app")
Actually this is up to a buyer to ask review code or not, and there are different levels of code review, so, as Jonathan said you can dive as deep as you would like. The buyer in question did not ask for any.
See, I don't agree with this unless the developer is grossly misrepresenting the app. You're basically entering an agreement with the seller but then breaking it to suit your purposes. If you're unhappy with someone's terms of sale then you should take your business somewhere else.
I don't think it applies to the app store but there is usually a chargeback fee to a merchant when a customer charges back an item so you're taking money out of the software developer's pocket if you decide to use your credit card chargeback mechanism to get a free software trial.
I do agree that it's really dumb for a developer not to offer a free trial. Personally, I will never buy software without trying it first.
Credit card companies require that customers attempt to remedy any complaints with the merchant directly prior to initiating a charge-back. The customer clearly made no claim as to their concerns regarding the product, they just said they weren't the one that bought it, based on the claim of a fraudulent charge.
I see this much like purchasing a home. You have the opportunity to inspect the home during the closing (read code review). This is designed to provide a certification as to the quality of code without making the closed source code visible to you directly. If you don't utilize this, and the app complies as the same app that exists in the app store, it is hard to make the argument that you didn't know what you were getting. Unlike your example, as an app buyer you have the opportunity to use the app prior to purchasing ownership of the asset, so there is much more transparency than in a traditional app store software download example.
No they do not need to attempt to contact the merchant. Especially companies like American Express, they will usually chargeback first and ask questions later. In fact, if customers call in to ask what a particular charge is, they will ding the merchant.
I wasn't previously aware of apptopia -- looks very cool and I'm surprised I haven't heard of it before. There's always an interesting outlier project that escapes our notice, right?
But I'm a little confused about this situation. Who was listing this app? (i.e., who originally coded the app?) Was he/she consulted about the situation?
Perhaps I'm not yet understanding how Apptopia works, but I'm surprised you took this action without consulting with the app's author. Or do you own all the apps listed outright? Or did you pay him/her for the app, regardless of the chargeback?
Anyway, glad this made to to HN, I'll take a closer look at Apptopia.
EDIT: And just to be clear, I meant an outlier on the distribution of the projects that are on my screen, not a global outlier for everyone. Clearly, given your funders and growth, many people are aware of your project.
Just in case you're wondering, I sold my app on Apptopia and it was a great experience. My friend and I made a game that was very pretty and fun but wasn't obviously monetizable beyond ads. I put it up on Apptopia and Jonathan hustled his ass off and got me $2500 for the app, which was great considering it was a side project and I wanted to pass it on to someone with more time.
So we brokered this app acquisition. The seller (original coder of the app) sold the ownership to this buyer. After paying for and receiving the app, this buyer initiated a wrongful chargeback (we paid out the seller already, so we took the hit as the broker and escrow provider).
So in essence, since he "returned" the app to us, we now own it, and therefore, the app developer community now owns it.
OK, totally clear now. It wasn't at first clear to me what had happened to the seller. In any case, I think your decision to open source the app was totally reasonable, given the buyer's failure to pay for exclusive ownership. Just glad to hear the seller was taken care of. And thanks for the BSD license -- it's a generous license.
Really wild point. So malicious, but i guess in the same sense that would be a "clever" way to "pay yourself". The seller is someone we have worked with before and has multiple listings with Apptopia (and has had them for a few months now). They also have separate payment profiles. So if they are the same, they have gone through great lengths to hide it...
Still good to keep an eye on. Thanks for making me think through it.
It isn't really clear from the article under what license the source is available. For instance, is it using a common Free Software license such as GPL or a BSD-like one, such that interesting parties can actually do something with it? That would be much more consumer friendly than the mere permission to have a look at it.
Wow. This is an amazing point, and quite honestly i am sorry for not including it. My intent is to have people DO SOMETHING WITH IT. Not just to look at it. I want people to very much do anything they find of value with it. Would that be more GPL or BSD? I will update the post...
Also, the MIT license (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_license) is quite popular. It is also equivalent to the 2-clause BSD, but not quite as short as the more modern ISC license.
Good for you, Jonathan. Apptopia is an incredible service and this is a great response to being ripped off. I know how hard you work on each sale so it's frustrating that something like this would happen.
Downloaded the source and took a look at it. It is a PhoneGap powered Android app, that serves as a viewer to some hard rock artists' videos on YouTube.
While it's always great to see android apps being made available for others to investigate and learn from, I have to ask: Are you sure that there isn't something else going on that would explain this behaviour?
I've just installed the app on my own device (Galaxy S2), and the app is simply terrible. It's slow to respond to clicks, scrolling is laggy, I actually can't view any videos because the click event isn't triggering anything (I can see in the debug logs that it's happening, it's just not doing anything)
All I'm wondering, is if the chargeback was because the buyer was unhappy with what he/she got?
The scenario you're describing is exactly what we try to prevent with our code review option. Likewise, every app we broker is listed publicly on either the AppStore or Google Play, so every buyer can and SHOULD download the app to preview it.
I should also note (which I hoped was obvious, but after re-reading the post and thread I realize it isn't), that we actively reached out to this buyer to see what was wrong and what happened. We even gave him the opportunity to withdraw the chargeback and indicated that we would continue to do business with him. Even though it's somewhat of a moot point, this chargeback was not the result the buyer being misunderstanding what he was getting.
There is not other way to signal to the developer that the software is not what you thought it was. For instance, I purchased a note-taking app from the App Store last night that turned out to not be what I needed. There was no way of knowing this beforehand because there is no free version that I could test and pirating it would have been way more trouble than it's worth (plus, I'm not doing that anymore).
So, what's the reasonable solution? For physical goods, if I'm unhappy with the purchase, I can return the item and receive a refund. For software, there is no good return method.
Now, one could argue that it's only a $10 app, but that isn't the point. The point is that $10 paid for something that I don't want or need, and while $10 probably isn't much to me, it should not be yours because your product failed to meet my needs.
As for the rest of the post, the purchaser in that case was out of line. He'd bought the product, used it for a significant amount of time, and apparently gotten some value out of it. At that point, there should be no ability to return the item.