Licensing fee for SDK 33 only

[gravity007]

After reading the Harman email, I'm wondering if SDK 33 will require a fee. I am fine with paying a license fee going forward, but given the request for developer feedback on the beta, and the tight schedule (Aug 1) for updating Android apps, this feels like any awkward scenario.

This question is for Harman/Adobe, please resist the urge wax poetic .

[ASWC]

As a company HARMAN can only justify taking over the management of AIR updates as a commercial product and nobody can blame them. It is extremely likely that AIR33 will be fee based (as HARMAN itself implied). That income will help keeping AIR alive longer or maybe (as HARMAN indicated as a goal) for reviving the technology as a whole. I'd be surprised if that fee is enormous.

[gravity007]

I am praying that Harman takes over this board and allows me to filter specific users' responses going forward.

[ASWC]

HARMAN has posted an email that you can use to ask questions and stay in contact but you CHOOSE instead to post in a PUBLIC forums and whine about people replying... Get over yourself please, you are not fooling anyone with this non sense.

[gravity007]

I wrote:

"I doubt I'm the only developer publishing to Android with this (very common) problem."

In other words I think this information in concise form will benefit others as well as myself.

[Flipline]

Yes, in the emails that Andrew from Harman has been sending, he's confirmed that there will be fees involved with AIR 33 separated by tiers, and that there would likely be a free tier.  They initially were planning this to be royalty-based, but the latest emails mention they're rethinking it to possibly be subscription-based instead, though of course we won't know for certain until they publish the final details (which they're aiming to do in the next week or so).

[gravity007]

The question was specifically addressed to Harman.

I am not a large scale user like others on this board, and I have small clients who will balk at update fees. Please do not post spurious reflections on how those customers should understand the world changes and yada yada. If only we lived in a world where all customers understood the wisdom of yada yada... but we don't.

I doubt I'm the only developer publishing to Android with this (very common) problem.

[ciaoamigos1973]

Let's not turn around ... it's a bad business move for us developers. They can not a month before the block imposed by google play that to update our apps we have to pay the adobe air license. If we knew it a year earlier would you have continued to use adobe air? or migrate to react native or other technologies....

[gravity007]

I'm hoping that SDK33 will involve little or no fee for that reason.

I'm perfectly fine with license fees in principle. Like everybody else who has suggested it on this forum, I see licensing fees as the lifeline for continuing development of AIR.

As long as I can give my clients fair warning, they can decide themselves whether to support Android versions going forward. But if I contact them and say "pay now or your app will stop working in a month" they won't consider that fair warning.

[Frédéric C.]

I'm not sure what the licensing model will be, but I think we can hope it won't be a per-project model (in other words, you'll pay once a month and be able to deploy as many projects for as many clients as you want). In that case, couldn't you consider paying from your pocket, instead of making your clients pay the fee? If Harman give you the possibility to charge clients for a service involving a technology you master, I think it might be reasonable to consider paying this fee yourself?

[ciaoamigos1973]

This decision was not made this month ... Everything was planned, thus forcing all developers to pay the license. No one can migrate all projects in new technology in a month. It is called Ethical Blackmail.

[Leo Kanel]

This is why a lot of us migrated back in May, when a few people talked about the red flag, whistles and everything else

By staying you are forced to go on with it, or at least pay until you migrate.

[hferreira80]

The scenario is not good for anyone who is dependent on AIR for Mobile !

On one hand has the requirement of Android 64 bits and on the other the incognito costs.

Basically, they can charge whatever this want (until some point) and people will have to pay.

Don't forget that the Apps will not vanish from the night to day.

If you don't update your Android Apps, your App (current version) is suppose to work for a while and you still have time to build one from scratch on an alternative (better) option.

[Leo Kanel]

True, I think they are not going to be removed (although I am not clear how this will work), but with the change to targetSDK to 28 enforced in August, then the upcoming Android Q, there are definitely going to be changes which will force devs to update their apps. At least, it is a good thing that there is a solution for this and that Harman is working hard to get ready for all this.

[ASWC]

Apps should not be removed from store by Google, the deadline is about app updates which means you won't be able to push new app versions to store after deadline if they don't comply to guidelines but your existing apps already in store should be fine at least for a while (probably a long while).

[ASWC]

Not sure how much of this was really planned so I'm inclined at giving HARMAN the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they are really just trying to save AIR, who knows. The reason I'm saying this is that HARMAN has no forums or dedicated website for AIR (they are working on it) so it really seems that they haven't known FOR SURE if they were inheriting AIR up until maybe a few weeks before June.

This being said I'd be surprised if they come up with a big fee for AIR as this would scare away the last remaining users for sure. A small fee is more likely so they can keep the actual users and still try to attract new users with upcoming features/updates. We are gonna know soon enough anyway, a big fee would mean they are trying to cash out before the end of AIR on the back of those that didn't want to make the switch, so a big fee for sure would be bad news for AIR on many levels.

[gravity007]

If its were just a matter of paying a fee, sure I'd cover it. But re-publishing is work and I can't afford to cover that.

[Frédéric C.]

As ASWC said above, the Google deadline is about future updates of your apps. All your current 32bits apps will still be available and served to devices. So you won't be forced to update them in a month, and it should not require extra work / investment on your part if you didn't plan to update them for other reasons (like new features or bug fixes). It seems there's been a lot of confusion about this lately, but apps won't just stop working.

[mintyh]

Actually, the deadline seems to be earlier than that. I uploaded a new file to begin testing, but I can't roll it out for testing until I fix errors... and the errors are below.

So it may be an August requirement, but I can't even do testing with 32bit now.

---

Warning:

This release is not compliant with the Google Play 64-bit requirement

The following APKs or App Bundles are available to 64-bit devices, but they only have 32-bit native code: 19006014 and 19006015.

From August 1, 2019 all releases must be compliant with the Google Play 64-bit requirement.

Target API level requirements from August 2019

Warning:

Your app currently targets API level 27 and must target at least API level 28 to ensure it is built on the latest APIs optimized for security and performance.

From August 2019, new apps must target at least Android 9.0 (API level 28).
From November 2019, app updates must target Android 9.0 (API level 28).

Tip:

Change your app's target API level

[Frédéric C.]

I think this warning has been there for a while now. Are you sure you can't bypass it? Until now, it was possible to do so.

[Flipline]

I thought the same thing too, but that's just a warning -- in my case the real reason why I couldn't test or publish is because I didn't finish filling out everything under the Store Presence section for the store listing, pricing, content rating, etc.  Once I filled all of that out, I was able to test and publish (and could ignore that warning), so hopefully you can still do the same.

[mintyh]

Apologies: @Flipline is right on the money. I'd missed one of the greyed out ticks in the Google Play app listing. Sorting that means I can now roll things out for testing (despite the warning messages).

And hopefully with the new contact from Harmon today, we'll have 64-bit AIR soon...

[Leo Kanel]

When I said the exact same thing back in February, a lot of hardcore funboys, wanted to crucify me =P Then, no SDK came, and they said "give it time we have faith".

For many people it was a business decision to leave AIR for all new projects cause they were seeing the signs. So in a way we knew since the missed beta release back on February.

[misterTi]

I'm moving everything to Ionic ...