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Here's a thought. One of the most frustrating things to me about this kind of thing is that Google (or any other major tech company) could just ignore me and j

Here's a thought. One of the most frustrating things to me about this kind of thing is that Google (or any other major tech company) could just ignore me and just tell me "you're malware". I get it. Technology people cost a lot of money, so I would propose that companies who the public depend on MUST offer consulting out-of-band at an hourly (or daily?) rate. This way the real issues are squashed. Now I know that I can get the guidance I need to fix the problems my product is having. Also this helps reassure the public about the big companies intentions in that these FUD stories will become instantly irrelevant. You want your stuff fixed? Pay for the guidance. You don't want to spend the time fixing the issues? So be it. But don't expect anyone to listen to your problems. On top of this, if it's a small open-source project, create a way to streamline funding for the guidance. If a lot of people depend on your project they'll almost certainly chip in a small sum per person for the guidance you need.

jedimastert 5y ago
Except that ties access to these companies depend on to people who have the money to do so, which creates a huge imbalance
- unexaminedlife 5y ago
  We're not talking a huge amount of money. I'm saying let these companies recoup the balance of the cost. For a small company it might seem unreasonable for a Google to bill them $100/hr for consulting services. Then again if 1,000,000 people are asking for those services at 8 hrs a pop. You do the math.
thih9 5y ago
Wouldn't that encourage the big company to find more issues in apps, and then tell devs to buy consulting hours to figure out how to solve them?
- unexaminedlife 5y ago
  Well, if that started happening I'm sure people would start posting stories of how disingenuous the company's practices had become. If they flagged some software as malware they should already know exactly what the reasons are. So we'll call that maybe a 1-2 hr session to get up to speed on exactly what the issues are. How someone goes about fixing it is another story. I'd say by default those sessions should be posted online for public viewing just so everyone can learn from the mistakes of the original team, or to make a judgment of how disingenuous Google is being about the issues. At the request of the project requesting those services they could make those sessions private. Also this could lead to real innovation in the tooling for example Google consultants could write unit tests that would need to pass in order to be allowed on the Google App store. Those unit tests would then, potentially become public so everyone could just download the unit tests from Github in order to confirm their software meets requirements. The other thing is Google would almost certainly see this as a cost center. Billing people at-cost (or slightly above that) for consulting services is way more labor intensive and tbh annoying for companies with a trillion dollar + market cap.
- m-p-3 5y ago
  That would sure beat talking to a brick wall and get stonewalled without any recourses.
tempestn 5y ago
The eBay developer program does this. Premium support tickets are $75/hour iirc, refunded if it turns out to be a legitimate issue on their end. It can be a bit irksome, but it's a lot better than being stuck with no avenue to talk to a real person when something's gone wrong.

jedimastert 5y ago

Except that ties access to these companies depend on to people who have the money to do so, which creates a huge imbalance

unexaminedlife 5y ago
We're not talking a huge amount of money. I'm saying let these companies recoup the balance of the cost. For a small company it might seem unreasonable for a Google to bill them $100/hr for consulting services. Then again if 1,000,000 people are asking for those services at 8 hrs a pop. You do the math.

thih9 5y ago

Wouldn't that encourage the big company to find more issues in apps, and then tell devs to buy consulting hours to figure out how to solve them?

unexaminedlife 5y ago
Well, if that started happening I'm sure people would start posting stories of how disingenuous the company's practices had become. If they flagged some software as malware they should already know exactly what the reasons are. So we'll call that maybe a 1-2 hr session to get up to speed on exactly what the issues are. How someone goes about fixing it is another story. I'd say by default those sessions should be posted online for public viewing just so everyone can learn from the mistakes of the original team, or to make a judgment of how disingenuous Google is being about the issues. At the request of the project requesting those services they could make those sessions private. Also this could lead to real innovation in the tooling for example Google consultants could write unit tests that would need to pass in order to be allowed on the Google App store. Those unit tests would then, potentially become public so everyone could just download the unit tests from Github in order to confirm their software meets requirements. The other thing is Google would almost certainly see this as a cost center. Billing people at-cost (or slightly above that) for consulting services is way more labor intensive and tbh annoying for companies with a trillion dollar + market cap.
m-p-3 5y ago
That would sure beat talking to a brick wall and get stonewalled without any recourses.

tempestn 5y ago

The eBay developer program does this. Premium support tickets are $75/hour iirc, refunded if it turns out to be a legitimate issue on their end. It can be a bit irksome, but it's a lot better than being stuck with no avenue to talk to a real person when something's gone wrong.