Invitation to participate in App of the Season competition

[zareenc]

App of the Season is a free, virtual appathon hosted by the App Inventor Foundation that encourages dreamers, changemakers, and doers around the world to build mobile apps for a cause. The goal of the competition is to develop a mobile app using App Inventor that aligns with the competition’s theme of "Community" and best demonstrates technical skill, design, creativity, and impact. Submissions are due on April 30, 2023.

To learn more and sign up for updates, visit appinventorfoundation.org/app-of-the-season.

[TIMAI2]

Can extensions (paid/unpaid) be used ?

[zareenc]

Great question - yes, extensions are allowed for the App of the Season competition!

Edit:
We discussed internally and decided we will be allowing free and open source extensions.

Our reasoning: the source AIAs of the app submissions will be distributed for judging, and eventually, the winning apps will be made public. Most, if not all, paid or proprietary extensions have clauses by the creators that prevents users from distributing these extensions to others, so we want to respect these rules.

In the future, we would like to host appathons that also allow for paid extensions, but we will likely need to have some discussions about how to implement this in a fair way.

[Peter]

I think you should only allow free extensions. The extensions should also be available to everyone.

[zareenc]

Hi Peter, thank you for the helpful feedback. We discussed internally and decided we will be allowing free and open source extensions.

Our reasoning: the source AIAs of the app submissions will be distributed for judging, and eventually, the winning apps will be made public. Most, if not all, paid or proprietary extensions have clauses by the creators that prevents users from distributing these extensions to others, so we want to respect these rules.

In the future, we would like to host appathons that also allow for paid extensions, but we will likely need to have some discussions about how to implement this in a fair way.

[Gordon_Lu]

Great idea, but I still have a couple of questions.

@zareenc

We discussed internally and decided we will be allowing free and open source extensions.

So I guess you cannot use free but closed-source extensions? Previously in Appathon participants could use closed-source extensions, as long as if they were free.

@zareenc

we would like to host appathons that also allow for paid extensions

As Peter told you privately, in any way, this presents an unfair advantage for users like me, who do not earn. Remember that AppInventor was designed to be free, and for all.

1. You cannot distribute paid extensions, so what is the point of distributing the AIAs including them?

2. If so, an experienced extension developer may develop paid extensions and use it him/herself, blocking any other user from using it. This doesn't seem to be really fair.

[AkshatRana]

@zareenc

we will be allowing free and open source extensions

I have a question here, as closed source extensions are not allowed, can we make the use of custom extension? like creating an extension by ourselves for the purpose of this contest?

[Peter]

You should make your extension free beforehand so everybody has the same chance when using it.

[natalie]

@Gordon_Lu

So I guess you cannot use free but closed-source extensions? Previously in Appathon participants could use closed-source extensions, as long as if they were free.

Thank you for your input!

If the extensions are closed-source, it becomes harder for judges to tell what the extension does at a functional level or if there could be any privacy or security issues that we may not want to distribute if the app wins.

@Gordon_Lu

As Peter told you privately, in any way, this presents an unfair advantage for users like me, who do not earn. Remember that AppInventor was designed to be free, and for all.

1. You cannot distribute paid extensions, so what is the point of distributing the AIAs including them?
2. If so, an experienced extension developer may develop paid extensions and use it him/herself, blocking any other user from using it. This doesn't seem to be really fair.

This is very much still an idea that we are brainstorming for the (not near) future. If we do end up hosting an appathon that would allow for paid extensions, those apps would be judged in a separate category as the ones that only use free and open source extensions. Per the Kodular collaboration announcement, we are thinking of ways to implement paid extensions in a more formal way within App Inventor, which may help with the distribution issue.

Before we change our appathon format, we are sure to ask for feedback from our community far in advance (e.g. the App of the Month feedback survey). We always try to design programs that our community can be excited about and we appreciate hearing from you!

[natalie]

@AkshatRana

I have a question here, as closed source extensions are not allowed, can we make the use of custom extension? like creating an extension by ourselves for the purpose of this contest?

You can create a custom extension for the purpose of this contest if you open source the extension (e.g. it is viewable on Github under the Apache or MIT license, or similar open source license).