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The original was posted on /r/androiddev by /u/ElyeProj on 2024-04-07 07:47:30.

In Android development, at times we discover some libraries that could be handy for our current need. But as we know, dependence on libraries might have immediate gain, but there are cost to considerer. I am trying to list the number of things we consider, and would definitely like to hear other opinions if I miss out anything?

• Functionality and usability
  • Is it something we cannot implement/manage ourselves?
  • Does it meet all that we want to do?
  • Does it has good documentation, good and clear API design?
  • Is it stable already (in production) or still evolving?
  • Is it easily customisable to possible future need we foresee might need?
  • Does it have much more than what we really to do?
  • Can it be used for our staging testing need?
• Legal
  • What license is it using, and the impact to the source code (has to be open source too?)
  • Does it gather user privacy data for advertising purpose? Can it be turned off?
  • Do we need to pay for its usage?
  • Does it conform to Data Safety
  • Have we list its usage in our app licensing sharing
  • Is Google okay for us to use it (and published into PlayStore?) e.g. Google SDK Runtime
• Maintainability
  • Is it managed by a reliable group of developers/organisation
  • Do we have a local team owning to ensure it this library continue to be well oversee.
  • How well/popular is it adopted?
  • Does it has good support? (Does the issue get addressed soon, is there a community e.g. forum, stackoverflow supporting it?)
  • Can it be debugged (visible logs or code to trace) when there’s issue to understand better?
• Business consideration
  • Is it used as part of our core business functionality need?
  • If we need to exit from it (for whatever reason), what is the cost like?