F-Droid criticizes Google's anti-sideloading policy, calls for antitrust scrutiny

[harlan4096]

F-Droid has hit out at Google for its controversial app distribution policy changes. It could spell the end of the open source app ecosystem on Android.

Google sent shockwaves among the developer community in August, when it announced that app developers need to verify their identity to distribute their Android apps outside the Play Store. The Mountain View company believes this would mitigate the risks of harmful Android apps. This led to criticism from users, devs, with some worrying that it could effectively kill sideloading apps from third-party sources.

F-Droid shares the same view, in an article published on its website, it explains how it is not merely hosting open source apps at its repository. The source code of the apps are inspected to ensure that they don't contain advertisements, trackers, etc. It is only after an app passes this inspection, that F-Droid build service compiles the app, and packages, and signed with its own cryptographic key, or in some cases using the developer's own key. After this, the apps are distributed as APKs. This is why app updates on F-Droid tend to be a delayed by a day or two. It's quite similar to how Mozilla handles add-ons hosted on its AMO, there is a review process involved.

As opposed to this, the Google Play Store's reviews system does not block apps that can track users, transmit their data to advertisement networks. The Play Store has hosted malware apps on several occasions, and Play Protect's malware detection has been abysmal at best.

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