would not be a problem if developers stuck together and mass refused to get verified
this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2025
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In business I am cut throat and I see this as an opportunity to migrate a huge percentage of googles (app store) customers to F-Droid.
In order for this to be possible F-Droid is going to have to spend the next 2 years campaigning against google as a more liberating alternative; which it already is. If the customers aren't all at the heels of google they should care and shift over. Android was not created by and is not a google product,, so they can't truly enforce the developer or side loading thing if a good percentage of the market gets an alternate non google android.
If I were F-Droid creating my own spin of android (basically stock with F-Droid bulit in) would be my main objective currently
Some of my favorite apps are on F-Droid and nowhere else.
These apps are for the privacy-minded people, by privacy-minded people who will absolutely refuse to be tied by name (or digital signature with an identity verification process) to their apps.
And then there's the problem of making legally gray apps (emulators), now someone needs to be tied to that app, which makes then easier to find, or if an app starts to irritate a government or corporation, then they can find who published it pretty easily (likely without proper the proper legal oversight/subpoena) even outside of the Play Store.
What the fuck Google.
Which apps are your favorites? If you don't mind sharing
It's not closing down F-Droid, but rather not allowing to operate normally in stock Android. There are still alternative Android systems that makes use of F-Droid.
There are, but the roadblocks to installing Android derivatives on most Android phones would probably reduce the F-Droid install base by at least 90%.
Update: I see the issue now.
I don't see the issue:
- F-Droid compiles the apps
- F-Droid publishes the apps
- F-Droid gets registered
- F-Droid subclasses app identifiers under its own
...and things go back to normal.
You won't be able to update an F-Droid app with an Obtainium one, but Android is already warning about those, not allowing automatic updates from mixed sources.
The thing is that changing the app id requires too much patching to thousands of apps, and the users will not be able to migrate from the current f-droid version.
F-Droid does automated patching already, they often remove "anti-features". The migration is a PITA, but not the end of the world, Kiwix did that recently (split into Play Store and F-Droid versions).
That patch is manually added. Moreover, some apps have hard binding with their id, making the situation more complicated. Kiwi is not on f-droid at all. They host their own version. It might be easier for the app authors to do it. But f-droid maintainers don't have this capacity.
My bad, Kiwix is on IzzyOnDroid. You're right, F-Droid itself might have a tougher time.