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Title: F-Droid 2.0: FOSS Android Appstore Continues Updating Despite Google's
Pending 'Developer Verification' Plan

Link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/09/25/0344...

"F-Droid, a third-party app repository that only distributes free and open-
source software packages for Google's Android mobile platform, on Thursday
announced version 2.0 of its Android app," reports The Register. Though they
also note "a big banner across the top of the F-Droid site" pointing to a
site describing pending changes from Google that threaten the future of F-
Droid... [D]evelopers who want their apps broadly distributed outside the
official Google Play Store will need to register with Google and verify their
identities. Google's Full Distribution option includes paying a one-time $25
fee, handing over a copy of a government-issued ID to verify one's identity,
and conforming to Google's terms of service. Google also offers a free
Limited Distribution option that doesn't require government ID verification
but restricts distribution to 20 authorized devices, while apps from
unverified developers can still be installed by users who enable Android's
advanced installation flow. The potential death warrant hanging over its head
hasn't stopped the F-Droid team from rolling out a bunch of new features for
an app it says it intends to keep working on for years to come... The team
also credited the EU's many Digital Markets Act decisions against Google for
making the installation experience smoother for users. F-Droid can now use a
unified installation service for its apps thanks to the availability of a pre-
approval API that allows users to approve an installation when they request
it, rather than waiting until the app has finished downloading. That, said
the F-Droid team, "brings the F-Droid install experience on official Android
devices much closer to what the built-in app store can provide."
Additionally, F-Droid 2.0 can fetch and install app updates automatically,
which it now does by default. All of those changes, however, won't matter
much if Google pushes ahead undeterred with its plans to force registration
onto non-Play Store developers. F-Droid's announcement on Thursday makes it
seem that the team isn't going to go quietly. F-Droid has gone 10 years
without a major update, notes Ars Technica - and spent over a year developing
F-Droid 2.0: The new F-Droid client was redesigned from scratch in Kotlin
Compose, which is the standard for modern Android apps. This makes the store
much more responsive, and there's optional support for Android's Material
theming. The interface has also been cleaned up considerably, making the most
important functions easier to access and hiding some others in overflow
menus... Unlike the Play Store, F-Droid doesn't track your taps and installs
to push ads and suggestions - it helps you find things and gets out of the
way. F-Droid now includes a huge number of categories, drilling down to
specialized niches like firewalls, password managers, and VPNs. You can see
all these groups in the search tab. There are also higher-level categories
listed on the main Discover page. When searching for apps, F-Droid will now
be able to return results based on app descriptions rather than just names.
"One of the goals of the rewrite was to lower the barrier for new
contributors," F-Droid said in their announcement. "We are excited to begin
rolling out F-Droid 2.0 to users over the coming weeks after 14 test
releases." (And if you want the 2.0 release right now, it's available on the
versions page.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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