quran android no longer open source

update - as of 12/31/2015, i’ve re-open sourced the app after the discussion here.

today is a very sad day for me, since i have finally decided to close quran android’s source code once and for all. throughout the past few years, i’ve come across several examples of people republishing the app with the intention of making money (placing ads on the index page, or, worse yet, on the top and bottom of each quran page while reading). recently, someone brought to my attention an example of someone repackaging the apk and shipping it with malware.

for example, fabric shows me this crash:

this issue is happening on the current version in the play store, which was pushed on 5/31/2015. looking at the graph, you can see that until mid July, there were no crashes (because this sdk doesn’t exist in our app). after mid-July, someone pushed this (modified) apk somewhere, people started downloading it, and it started reporting crashes to me.

a similar thing happened some time back, but with the person pushing their own version:

a few years ago, i closed the source to quran android for similar reasons, only to end up bringing it back after a few months, figuring the benefit of it being open outweighs the harm. unfortunately, this time, the decision is not meant to be reversed insha’Allah.

i’ve come to the difficult realization that apps are not meant to be open sourced, because, when you open source it, there will always be people who try to profit off of your work (or destroy its credibility, etc).

quran will, insha’Allah, continue to be developed, but it won’t be open source anymore. the existing github project will be used to track issues. while i understand that removing the code will not completely stop these things from happening (apks are very easy to reverse engineer, and people with a will to do something will find a way), at the very least, i can stop making it super easy for people.

update - this seems to be a trojan that affects multiple apps downloaded from unofficial app stores.