Yeah not sure why he would worry about people using old devices if the old versions work fine. Just drop that code out of new releases and don't support old devices. It's not like the code will bit rot. Getting pulled from the store though that really stinks and google should be more transparent about that.

The author was pretty vague about exactly why it was removed. What goalposts were moved? I didn't think the Play Store had a policy that prohibits supporting older devices. There could be a bit more to the story, here.

It feels as if that (vagueness) is exactly the point: they would have to invest time in finding out how the goalposts have moved.

As is, their app got pulled and they said f-it, I don't care enough anymore to invest that time.

Probably target- and minimum- android version requirements in the manifest, which affects available APIs. IIRC they get bumped up again next month.

If something in your life becomes overwhelming, and you are receiving no compensation or recognition for any of your effort .. what, would you say, would be the smart move?

Totally! I had the same experience maintaining an iOS app (eventually abandoned), which is why I was curious and asked the question. Every new version of Xcode produces more warnings, deprecates more APIs, removes previously deprecated ones, and "strongly encourages" changing your code in all sorts of ways. Yuck! I was wondering if the same was true on Android.

Contrast that to Microsoft, who (at least used to) really get backwards compatibility. I bet I could dig out a Win32 program I wrote 20 years ago for NT4 and compile it today, and it would run on Windows 10.

I believe the record in 2015 or so was running Windows 1.01 calc.exe on Windows 10 32bit... Which was first upgraded all the way from Windows 1.01

Uneducated guess: probably the app just work for wide range of devices and versions, like notepad.exe does, and changing ANYTHING is against its value.

And perhaps that kind of app that are well regarded, needs no maintenance, AND not growing X% YoY IAP yadda yadda is unsightly in their eyes, so they remove it.

Google removed it or the developer?

Yup, if he charged a monthly subscription for it, things would be a lot more equitable.

Realistically, people who won't spend money to upgrade their phones aren't going to spend money on a subscription either. A different equitable solution is to make the app free but only support recent OSes; people running older OSes can use old APKs.

This is actually supported by the Play store itself where you can serve older APK to phones with older OS.

I’ve no way to upgrade iOS beyond 11 and miss the stock software and more. Video editing currently not possible with stock app, nor SoundCloud. No OTA upgrade nor iTunes, until I have clean cheap power and strong Internet access. Used to get it at libraries until March. Had Android, liked APK distro, glad it still works. Very cool that the store offers it, but also that there are alt stores.

Why not charge for the app AND then with the income you have incentive to keep supporting old devices.

Because the money earned vs old devices probably isn't worth it. At some point you have to cut support on old stuff unless there is some financial pay off or you're retired and want a hobby to keep you busy.

Of course you could use revenue from paying customers to support moochers, but there's no real incentive to do so and it's arguably unfair.

Maybe, but the GPL license is suggestive that the author started and continued to work on this project because it was seen as a genuine benefit to others, and for many years that was enough to keep them going.

Sure financial incentive would have greased the wheels, but it might have undermined the spirit of the project in the first place

People generally pay for products in order to get a benefit. It's still genuine.

The difference is the seller gets to share some of the benefit.

The human mind is funny this way: sometimes getting small amounts of money is worse than not getting money at all.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect

FWIW the author did previously take donations.