The consequences of Google requiring developer certification to install Android applications, even outside of Google’s own Play Store, are starting to reverberate. F-Droid, probably the single most popular non-Google application repository for Android, has made it very clear that Google’s upcoming requirement is most likely going to mean the end of F-Droid.
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 users will be left adrift, with no means to install — or even update their existing installed — applications.
↫ F-Droid’s blog post
A potential loss of F-Droid would be a huge blow to anyone trying to run Android without Google’s applications and frameworks installed on their device. It’s pretty clear that Google is doing whatever it can to utterly destroy the Android Open Source Project, something I’ve been arguing is what the rumours about Google killing AOSP really mean. Why kill AOSP, when you can just make it utterly unusable and completely barren?
Sadly, there isn’t much F-Droid can do. They’re proposing regulators the world over look at Google’s plans, and hopefully come to the conclusion that they’re anti-competitive. Specifically the European Union and the tools provided by the Digital Markets Act could prove useful here, but in the end, only if the will exists to use them can these tools be used in the first place.
It’s dark times for the smartphone world right now, especially if you care about consumer rights and open source. iOS has always been deeply anti-consumer, and while the European Union has managed to soften some of the rough edges, nothing much has changed there. Android, on the other hand, had a thriving open source, Google-free community, but decision by decision, Google is beating it into submission and killing it off. The Android of yesteryear doesn’t exist anymore, and it’s making people who used to work on Android back during the good old times extremely sad.
Jean-Baptiste Quéru, husband of OSNews’ amazing and legendary previous managing editor Eugenia Loli-Queru, worded it like this a few days ago:
All the tidbits of news about Android make me sad.
I used to be part of the Android team.
When I worked there, making the application ecosystem as open as the web was a goal. Releasing the Android source code as soon as something hit end-user devices was a goal. Being able to run your own build on actual consumer hardware was a goal.
For a while after I left, there continued to be some momentum behind what I had pushed for.
But, now, 12 years later, this seems to have all died.
I am sad…
↫ Jean-Baptiste Quéru
And so am I. Like any operating system, Android is far from perfect, but it was remarkable just how open it used to be. I guess good things just don’t survive once unbridled capitalism hits.
Safety as a excuse to push this kind of thing is so 2010s… and they still does as if nobody notices what this is really about: increasing control and profit margins. If there’s a single niche, even if 0,2% of their user base, that is outside their reach… they must be broken, harassed and forced inside the cage, they are a menace, and a loss of a million or two for their shareholders (the real customers of these hot garbage that big tech is).
Modern big tech management is a high tech reedition of robber barons.