Hello,
My name is Felix and I had the idea to develop a small app for Android. After programming for quite a while, I’m now wondering if I can actually publish this app?
Description of the app
My app is designed to give the user an overview of the occurrence and frequency of species in certain areas. Questions like these should be answered:
- Is it worth georafically looking for species X here?
- Is it worth looking for species X at this time of year/time of day?
- At a location unknown to me, can I observe species X here?
The user of the app must log in to the app with their access data from this site These are stored in the Android Secure Storage. I need them for the requests to the GBIF API.
After logging in, the user can search for species and regions. To do this, I send corresponding requests to the GBIF API. The combination of both inputs can be used to create an observation report. The observations of this combination are displayed on a map and analysed for diagrams. In addition to the pure representation of the observations, I have implemented a heatmap to get a less detailed impression on the map. I am well aware that protected species are also stored here.
Using the data
I download the observations using api.gbif.org/v1/occurrence/search and am very specific about this. I use the “taxonKey” and the “gadm_gid” from the API. Some queries also work with a self-drawn polygon. I save the result of this query in a local SQLite database so that I can call up such an observation report at any time.
The question at the end: Am I allowed to make this app available to the public? And am I allowed to charge money for this app? I have now invested many hours in developing it and I think the function could also be interesting for other users.
If you need more information and details, please ask me.
Kind regards,
Felix Gelpke
Hello again,
So, no response after 10 days. Maybe some screenshots from the app will help?
The list of observation reports and the heat map implementation for one report, and some diagrams for the time aspect of the observations and the map with all the markers:
Kind regards,
Felix
Hi Felix, and welcome.
Sorry for the slow response — I somehow overlooked this.
Firstly, congratulations on your work.
It looks very nice, and I can imagine several directions you might take it. For example, encouraging people to explore areas where unrecorded species are likely to be found. You might also build in functionality to share records directly with GBIF, or advertise/integrate with well-established citizen science platforms.
Answering your questions:
Am I allowed to make this app available to the public?
Yes — and best of luck with your launch.
Am I allowed to charge money for this app?
Yes — but you should add filters to exclude the CC-BY-NC data if you do.
I’d like to offer a few thoughts on this, though. A paid-for tool that relies entirely on open data — often the work of volunteers — could attract criticism. On the other hand, as someone who has earned a living as a software developer, I also know you need to make your way.
You might consider alternative approaches, such as:
-
Adding a page that allows people to make donations
-
Offering the app for free and using it to showcase your skills and software/domain expertise, with a view to securing paid freelance development work.
I hope this helps.
1 Like
Hi Tim,
Thank you for your reply. And also thank your for your thoughts about my app.
For the licence topic with commercial use I have to create some statistics about how much data is affected by the filtering. Of course more observations create a more accurate view of a region.
Donations instead of an paid app could be a solution. Some years ago I had another app with a donation button, but never recieve anything. It’s also more about covering any costs that may arise for an OSM tile server. At the moment, I’m using the public OSM server, but if a lot of people download the app, I’ll need my own tile server or a provider. I have to at least check how much something like that costs.
I have also considered possible criticism, mainly due to the position of rare, endangered species. From this view, it is very good that all the observations come in with a certain delay. I am contributing via iNaturalist or NABU|Naturgucker and observe a delay about 2-3 weeks. The chance that a large crowd will show up the next day after a rare species has been spotted is somewhat smaller.
Kind regards,
Felix
