gnu and linux have done the unthinkable, being very longevity and living very long woa!! they have been important!! and xmpp and irc are longevity too! but will f-droid have longevity too?? will it live for 40+ years?? android too?? both of them are open source so anyone can fork them and keep them alive yea!! n.n

  • Teknikal@lemm.eeEnglish
    8·
    11 months ago

    No, F-droid.org is already on its last legs, although I do hope it survives but from what I know one single guy now controls the entire repo and had made threats to shut it down more than once.

    I hope somebody forks the entire thing and hopefully does it with an attempt of it surviving as Google has gotten wild in their restrictions and something like F-Droid is sorely needed.

    Google lately has tried to restrict Android to below Ios levels. This will kill Android altogether imo and can’t be allowed.

    Androids only strength as an os was freedom and that under serious attack mostly by Google themselves.

    • LWD@lemm.eeEnglish
      6·
      11 months ago

      I don’t disbelieve you, but can you provide some links for that first paragraph worth of info? At least on its face, F-Droid looks like it’s doing fine.

      I’ve seen people recommend Obtainium as a more decentralized way of getting apps, and even F-Droid itself could have its servers shut down tomorrow and at least third party repositories would work, thankfully.

      I’d be shocked if Google ever managed to make Android worse than Apple devices, but sincerely fuck them for their continued efforts. At this point, it might be for legal reasons more than anything else.

      • Teknikal@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        Sorry I only know this from things I’ve read myself so it’s at best third hand info, but yeah from what I understand F-Droid is pretty much under constant threat of just vanishing.

        I use quite a lot of F-Droid apps myself so obviously I don’t want it to and wish it had an alternative.

    • TWeaK@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      The latest is that Google is making it easier for external stores. This was in development before their recent court loss against Epic. F-Droid is still going strong imo, although it’s certainly lacking as a place to browse for apps.

      If F-Droid did die something would definitely pop up in its place. It already has a protocol that allows you to monitor other app sources than the official F-Droid store, such as directly from developers. Hell, there are already alternate versions of the F-Droid app, eg AuroraDroid.

      All F-Droid does is vaguely check the app and then compile it with their key. They’re simply a single point of trust for this action, a buffer between the user and the many developers writing apps. This is a service anyone could provide, however right now no one else needs to because everyone trusts F-Droid well enough for most things, and their favourite app developers enough to update directly.