I published my app on Google Play Store but after a few months Google decided to block my app because:
After review, Pi-hole Droid, friimaind.piholedroid, has been suspended and removed from Google Play as a policy strike because it violates the impersonation policy.
My app is free and open source and it connects to Pi-hole by the officials APIs. It uses only two things "related" to Pi-hole:
the logo (you can view it on my Github repository)
the name "Pi-hole Droid"
I know that Pi-hole is licensed with EUPL so I don't think that there could be a problem.
I would like to know if it violates Pi-hole's licensing in some way because I don't make money from my app, it is and will forever open source and free but I don't want to violate any license.
Yesterday I contacted the Google support team but it would be great to have an official response from Pi-hole's team.
Hey @friimaind
i heard about the android app and i think it's a great idea
but sadly i'm an iPhone user
is there a possibility that you cold make an iPhone app?
that would be extremly great
Hi @kint!
Thank you for you interest. Unfortunately to make an iOS App I need a developer program which is 99USD/year. With Google I only paid one-time 20€. I'm sorry but it's expensive.
You have already taken some good steps by clearly stating that your app is an unofficial client, so we appreciate that. You also provide several links to us, which is also good.
However, our logo and name (Pi-hole™) are now both trademarked. These trademarks are in place to establish our reputation and deliver our brand, so that someone else doesn't pass off their product as our own.
I'm sure that's not your intent, but to that end, you should:
take down our logo and/or replace it with your own
rename the product/repo to something like Droid Pi-hole Companion to show that it's not official, but still make it easily searchable
Your interface also closely resembles ours, so paired with the use of our logo, it's understandable that it may have been flagged as an impersonation.
Hi @jacob.salmela
Thank you for your reply. I appreciate it.
Absolutely, I did not want to pass my app as an official product so I contacted Google Play Store again linking this thread. If Google unlocks my console I will definitely change app logo and app name as soon as possible. I'm sorry if this may have caused a problem.
We believe in open source software--Pi-hole would not exist without it--so we're happy to support other open source projects like yours, so no hard feelings. Just let us know when you have made the changes.
Also, the interface isn't really that big of a deal since we modified the interface from the open source project AdminLTE; I was just pointing out why it may have been flagged.
The situation is not good, at all.
Google does not want to unlock my app, the only thing I could do is send a totally new app but I will loose my recent user base (thousand of users), my reviews, my history, my statistics. It's absolutely exaggerated.
I didn't stole any identity, I didn't make money from using a logo and a indistinct name. I'm seriously re-evaluating investing my time on Android ecosystem.
I am very disappointed, this is not an open source philosophy. I could change the logo and the application name in 15minutes with an update. This sucks.
Honestly, I also do not think it was a Google action (the app was on store since February with many weekly updates). I'm afraid someone has reported my application for the suspected "impersonation policy". It could have been resolved with an e-mail. I'm not an improvised amateur.
