please make a lite version with only the necessary perms. Br Sebastian

I do not want the xbmc to display any sms or contacts from ny phone. And I do not want any application that is supposed to remote control a mediaplayer to have that isil kind of access to ny personal information. Please make a light version...

There are many other xbmc remotes in the market that are less feature rich than this official one. Instead of having devs spending time making and supporting a version that has less features, surely a better solution would be for you to choose one of the existing "light" versions?

have decided not to download based ont he excessive permissions

It's your choice and no one will force you.

Great app ! But please avoid the sms and contact permission. They are not necessary in my opinion

sms and contact are really a odd/limited feature, should that be another project or a extended version of this one?

I'd like to use the official XBMC remote because (I would hope) it would have better support and integration than a random third party version. However, there is no good reason to display SMS messages or phone calls on my PC/TV screen; I am holding my phone after all. I'll wait until you get a more privacy friendly version.

I just had the automatic pause feature work when I got a call today and I have to say it was awesome! I think these features are great and don't mind the permissions. Hopefully others can use another app that works with less features but I think many will appreciate the features.

I also think the message thing is great, without it I would've not noticed many SMS of my girlfriend while watching a film. And to answer someone here who stated he held his phone in his hand, I would say that seems not ver comfortable to me. I lay it away while watching films andbI shut down the sound too. I would appreciate it, if there could be an steady indicator in the corner of the TV when SMS have been obtained, until they are.read. It doesn't have to be big and should be abpe to be turned of, I for kyself would love to have it.

Too bad you fill it with strange permissions. I have no need of: "pauses anything playing on incoming calls", "displays SMS on the TV screen", "display contact info (and picture) on incoming calls or messages", "display the first part of the message".

Please create a light version of the app without the excessive permissions above. Then the user can choose how much permission the app should have. In its current state its just too much.

May be this app should be called, XBMC mobile communication center

You can turn off the SMS feature in the settings, and it only has READ permission However, I agree..the perms do seem somewhat "greedy", and the features shouldn't be neccessary imo. The control buttons also do not work. When playing music, pressing stop, next, or whatever does nothing. Besides this, a great app.

If you don't trust Team-XBMC don't install it. Or since this is open source take it and make your own Lite version. This a flaw of android in my opinion. There should be a way to deselect what permissions you don't want and lose only that functionality.. I like all the features, keep up the good work Devs.

I for one, like the Contact/SMS feature. Heck its the reason i use the official remote.

To the people complaining about excessive rights: I'm feeling ya. I hate it too when apps demand fishy rights. But the thing is, you can't NOT have them and support the features that use them OPTIONALLY. Either you demand for it, in which case the app can do whatever it likes with it, or you don't and the app will never get any access. That's how Android works.

Now I could argue it's the official app of the team and we aren't evil, but hey, that's not even necessary. I bet you know why: it's open source!

See, that's one of the beauties comparing closed source (and potentially paid) apps with free and open source apps. You get all the code and you can do your own shit with it. And even if you don't, you can be a lot more assured that there's no evil backdoors or other crap, because there really are people reading the code.

So my answer to those asking for a "light" version: I'm not gonna spoon feed you with that. I do this in my spare time for free, and if you're not willing to trust the code that is public, that is not really my problem. I hope you understand that.

No, I do not understand that. Sorry. Under these cirxumstances I will not use you app. Christine

So much whining....I love the SMS and calling feature. Its great as it avoids having to say "Oh wait, I just got to pause the movie, hold on button smashing .... Alright! Ready!" to the person calling.

Now that I think of it, I'd like it if it paused xbmc on outgoing calls as well as incoming. And to Christine, I'm sure you could pay the author to put stuff in for you. Heck I'd do it for you for much less than a thousand dollars.

@XBMC devs: Just ignore the ignorants who A) never wrote a line of code in their life, B) don't understand the slightest bit of how android permissions ACTUALLY work, C) whine ceaselessly about genuinely free and open software that was freely given to them out of the kindness of your heart. Those of us who have written a line or two of code in our lives appreciate deeply all the hard work you folks have done creating one of the best free media centers, and now one of the best remotes for it. I'm quite enjoying all the features of it thus far, and it's especially nice that the code IS open so that we can learn from/potentially add to/improve upon(?) any bits of it we may not consider "perfect" yet. Anywho, that's my two cents worth of input on this topic. Thanks a ton for XBMC and all the many associated goodies. Keep up the fantastic work. It's much appreciated. ;~)

I hear both sides of this argument, but may I step in with an alternate solution? I believe the latest Cyanogen ROMs (which are available for quite a few phones) have a feature called "selective permissions", which allows you to install an app with permissions X, Y, Z, but then disable Y and Z such that it can't actually use some of those permissions.

This is designed for exactly this scenario: where you have an app with extensive permissions, but don't actually want/need it to use all of them. I believe WhisperCore? offers this feature as well.

I think it's great that you're explaining why your app uses these permissions. All app developers should follow this practice. We feature your app on our website and would love add your permission justifications.

http://appoozle.com/App?appName=Official%2520XBMC%2520Remote&appID=qMLlXuQ231s%3D&operatingSystemID=nNLApdJeWJI%3D

You can contact us at http://appoozle.com/Home/ContactUs

SMS and incoming calls feature is nice in that I can enable or disable it. Also appreciate the description for each permission need. Thanks XBMC team.

In latest cyanogen you can strip a permission for an app. When an app is well programmed, it will not crash if the permission is denied on execution. Im afraid this is not the case :(

note to teens - a LOT of people have written a lot of code in their decades of professional life, and also many of them learned to be a little more civil, please hold the name calling. and yeah many people don't understand the permission model and yet it does not make their opinion in this regard any less valid. also "open source" is a great thing, but don't wave around like a club with which to beat down any dissenting opinion. i think the number of people who read the reasons for unexpected permissions and still disagree should be a significant indication in itself that these features/permissions are getting in a way.

And BTW - who would want their kids to see any random SMS that comes in? I guess you just get different perspective at different stages in life - some are afraid to miss girlfriend msgs others don't want kids to get "server down ..." support pages on their toy story.

peace

I think it is strange that people who do not trust the XBMC remote on their phone would also trust the XBMC application on their PC, which could do anything and read any file.

I think it's wonderful that the devs are putting in the time to add these features, and since it's open sourced it can be audited easily (assuming the build that ends up on the market is unmodified from these sources, of course... but that's another matter). People get paranoid about their phones, thanks largely to telco's trying their hardest to enforce epic phone bills when things go awry, and the number of 'celebrity X phone hacked' news stories that pop up regularly, and so forth. The thing I don't understand though, is that, having written plenty of lines of code myself in both professional and personal contexts, to make a lite version would simply be a case of commenting out chunks of code and a few gui elements. What's the problem with that if people WANT it? I bet if I had the inclination to do so I could turn this into a 'lite' version that satisfies everyone's desire for less sensitive permissions in a matter of minutes. I think the real problem here is a case of the devs telling people what they want instead of listening to what they want. Something that is more and more common these days unfortunately.

I know this sounds confrontational and again I want to reiterate that I'm thankful for this project and XBMC itself. But reading this thread, and reading the XBMC dev forums, there does appear to be a strong culture of arrogant denial and an undertone of 'you'll take what we give you and like it'.

Really there is no excuse for not releasing a lite version when a very large chunk of your userbase are asking for it. And trying to justify it is really just silly.

I think you should post these in the description of the app on Google play.

hello, I must admit that I am not very happy too when I see such permissions for a application firstly dedicated to remote control. Is it possible to put this feature (read SMS and contact) in a plug-in that would be separately installable ? In this way, you would have a minimum permissions on the core application, and for those who love to see their SMS on a big screen while watching a movie they can still have this feature. I think it can be a good compromise, but technically, is it easily feasible ?

Thanks for your job anyway, I know it's a big piece of code and it can be time consuming to maintain !