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...

The future of this elegant and proven system was put in jeopardy last month, when Google unilaterally decreed that Android developers everywhere in the world are going to be required to register centrally with Google. In addition to demanding payment of a registration fee and agreement to their (non-negotiable and ever-changing) terms and conditions, Google will also require the uploading of personally identifying documents[^regid], including government ID, by the authors of the software, as well as enumerating all the unique “application identifiers” for every app that is to be distributed by the registered developer.

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, and the world will be deprived of the safety and security of the catalog of thousands of apps that can be trusted and verified by any and all. F-Droid’s myriad users5 will be left adrift, with no means to install — or even update their existing installed — applications.

  • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    52·
    1 day ago

    You can’t root a ton of phones. My Samsung phone is 5 years old, and it still isn’t possible to root it. Also, at current I believe the Linux OS options have a much more severe battery drain.

    • Eagle0110@lemmy.worldEnglish
      32·
      18 hours ago

      Okay then keep buying Samsung phones and support their aggressive and audacious push for walled gardens on a platform that started as an open source OS, when they are neither the most affordable nor the most feature rich option.

      You deserve every bit of the enshitification and corporate exploitation that you have enabled and supported directly yourself.

    • Eagle0110@lemmy.worldEnglish
      34·
      1 day ago

      There’s a difference between you cannot root on a lot of phones and you cannot root on a lot of Samsung phones. Saying you cannot root Samsung phones isn’t all that different from saying you can’t root iPhones is it?

      • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        32·
        1 day ago

        Can can say “a lot” and “most” because Samsung has over half of all android phones in the US and is also globally the most used android phone.

        So yeah. A LOT of android phones can’t be rooted.

        • Eagle0110@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          1 day ago

          By 2025 Q2 Samsung smartphones have 19.7% global market share, how cute.

          Samsung has over half of all android phones in the US.

          Oh don’t worry it is not even close to being the biggest problem people in the US are having lol

          • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
            1·
            23 hours ago

            19% of cell phone market share. That isn’t android market share. Your number is including iOS and the sliver of other operating systems.