this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2024
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That sounds like some bug that should not occur and would of course be painfully annoying. The main advantage of it are the apps it provides, though. Some of them are not available in the play store (like NewPipe, a very good YouTube app without adverts, if that is still around). It is also a good place to start if you are looking for some new app for a specific feature, mainly because it consists of free, open source apps and you don’t have to sift through loads of low quality software that is riddled with ads, collects as much data as possible, or requires some obscene subscription fee, if all you wanted was a flashlight or whatever.
Yeah it was annoying, NewPipe I actually have installed, I just did it from the APK from GitHub I assume.
Making F-Droid an app in the Play Store would just open it to the same environment eventually though wouldn't it? Pressures to have ads to make money by sponsoring apps that have those things we don't like, which ultimately drive us back to installing via APK. It is a win for freedom of choice, that's true... But in the end I wonder if people would actually move from their currently working platforms. I could see the Play store just scalping apps they downloaded most often and adding them and taking a hit on their portion of profit on those apps to ensure the 99% of Android users still stay on their platform.
I mentioned something like this elsewhere, the Democrat president will make announcements to the people over the next 48 hours regarding their health and safety using a platform he knows the majority of his voters do not support the owner of. Not because the platform is better than others, but because it will reach a larger user base.
I don’t think so, F-Droid should not be viewed as a play store replacement for the masses. I would instead consider it an opinionated store / repository for apps that have to fulfil some pretty strict criteria. This makes it a great resource, and a good complementary resource, because that allows them to be picky and stick to their values. And it enables people that don’t mind the trade-offs to restrict themselves to F-Droid without having to research every app themselves, if they want to.
Most general users would hate the idea of dealing with multiple app stores, but I think some fragmentation like this would have some benefits as well. Note, for example, that F-Droid does not focus on quality of apps: There are lots of little projects that maybe don’t look super polished or are in early development, etc., and that is great. But there could just as well be another App Store focusing exclusively on high quality, feature-rich apps, while taking a more lenient stance on open source code and it being free. Or whatever kind of focus you want to place.
Then again, this could be achieved with a good search function and filters as well. In the end, what F-Droid offers is more choice a better place for apps that Google decided to ban from their play store for strategic reasons.