F-Droid and Google's Developer Registration Decree | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository
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For the past 15 years, F-Droidhas provided a safe and secure haven for Android users around the world tofind and install free and open source apps. When cont...

Recently Google decided that in the future for an app to be installable on an Android device, the developer of this app needs to be ID’d and registered at Google. They claim this is in order to “to better protect users”. However, I think, this is a move to get more control over the Android ecosystem, and the data they can collect with it. If anyone who wants to develop an app for Android devices has to be registered with Google, this puts all the power of who to allow distributing an app to Google.

Furthermore F-Droid shows, that safe app stores can exist without registration, neither of users nor of developers. There is zero malware or spyware on the F-Droid store. What there is on F-Droid is thousands of beautiful, useful and, most importantly, safe apps. And this entire ecosystem is at risk, because Google wants to gain more control over its users and over the Android operating system.

  • skilltheamps@feddit.orgEnglish
    3·
    3 days ago

    That is one issue. The next is that software support on phones is generally poor because there’s lots of proprietary drivers and they don’t have a common base system like computers do (bios). So building custom roms is difficult, doesn’t scale well over the number of different devices and they often don’t work great in the areas of camera, accelerated graphics and wireless networking. Also installing custom roms is also too difficult for the majority of people, and requires bootloader unlock which is either not possible at all or at a minimum cancels the warranty.