Every time I learn more about this issue, it becomes more and more clear how bad it is. Early explanations when people first started covering it did a really bad job of showing just how big of a negative impact it would have
In a post today Prud'hommeaux said that Google's planned changes are incompatible with F-Droid. "The F-Droid project cannot require that developers register their apps through Google, but at the same time, we cannot 'take over' the application identifiers for the open-source apps we distribute, as that would effectively seize exclusive distribution rights to those applications," he said.
"If it were to be put into effect, the developer registration decree will end the F-Droid project and other free/open source app distribution sources as we know them today," said Prud'hommeaux.
This could still be explained better but I think I follow it clearly now after a second read. This policy change would be so much worse than it was originally presented as being.