Hi Team and fellow foss users before anyone attacks me by reading title, first hear me out:
So, I recently was using a degoogled phone with f-droid and aurora store and the aurora store wasn’t working quite well or I would say not at all.
So I had this thought that what if F-droid team could include a completely opt in (off by default) repo in the f-droid app which would only include top 100 apps from playstore like Instagram, Whatsapp etc.
There are tools that allows apks to be extracted from latest versions from playstore so that won’t be an issue I suppose.
Some reasons why I think this feature is good for everyone:
A lot of people degoogle for first time and their first store of choice is F-droid. But then they go onto other malicious sites sometimes to download apks of popular proprietary apps. Only including top 100 apps from playstore would help a lot of people as these would be a good source for them and those top apps are the ones people need in most cases.
Since Open Source is generally (I oversimplified it a lot) about giving user choice and freedom to run the software but that doesn’t mean that an open source distribution platform can’t host proprietary apps. Right? I mean various linux app stores do host proprietary softwares and let’s be honest no one can use 100% open source software both hardware + software (even debian switched finally). So I know many of this is not related but what I wanna say is it won’t hurt fdroid to distribute a few proprietary apps when it’s opt in making it a better platform for new users.
Since people would use f-droid to get foss apps, but optionally getting proprietory apps will help fdroid a lot as well as it will become more popular :),
So easily tags can be implemented to telll whether an app is foss or proprietary or not.
This is all what I thought and I just wanted to share it here in the community.
What do you guys think and do you think this feature should be implemented? Why or why not?
You can just create a repo and advertise it. People will opt in by adding the repo.
You could just rifle the play store and offer them through your repo but you might get hit by copyright issues. On top of that you have to pay for their storage, bandwidth for downloads, and keep them up to date.
I’m new to linux and that command line stuff for creating a repo right now is too much for me. Maybe one day I might create one but that day would be far away.
You could just rifle the play store and offer them through your repo but you might get hit by copyright issues. On top of that you have to pay for their storage, bandwidth for downloads, and keep them up to date.
I don’t think they will send a copyright. There’s thousands of apk websites that does this where they upload apks to the site and I don’t think that this accounts for copyright as the apps are distributed not being modified or misused.
Btw do you think that this idea is good for including a repo like that?
For me, no. There’s no point in using a repo that might get branded as a pirate site and shut down. Also, there is a trust issue. There’s no real way of me verifying that you haven’t added your own spyware/malware like the myriad other sites you have mentioned. Other people might feel differently.
There’s no real way of me verifying that you haven’t added your own spyware/malware like the myriad other sites you have mentioned. Other people might feel differently.
I’m not a hacker or a person who mods apks with malware
But a File Hash won’t lie. Right? Well I wasn’t talking about piracy but fine thanks for your opinion
I don’t want to use play store and I’m not saying I want to use play store. Point is that many people who Starts their DeGoogle Journey ofc use fdroid and when they need to install proprietary apps, they have to find alternative ways which can be either hard or via malicious sites, so the point is that the top hundred apps from the play store can be merged in a Separately repository in the fdroid which makes it easier for new users to get top apps which most people need without any discomfort. Being opt in & distributing a few proprietary apps won’t hurt anyone.
But I can understand how hard it is have an open mind to get this point.
I can understand your logic, it makes sense at the first glance. But if we think a bit farther, a more complex question arises.
What’s the point of degoogling if you still stay in proprietary traps like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, WhatsApp, Snapchat, etc. that will dictate you their will? (Just checked top apps in the Google Play.)
IMHO a much better approach is to switch from proprietary messengers, social networks to more ethical alternatives (or even completely quit this stuff, which can make your life happier, BTW) and only after that switch to a Google-free device.
Popularity is not equals to Usefulness or Quality of apps.
Despite having very few number of apps compared to PlayStore, F-Droid is choice for many not just because of free & opensource apps…in many cases the Quality of apps are significantly better in terms of privacy, security and UI/UX. Also we’ve alternatives for almost all general/day-to-day used apps.
Same goes for proprietary apps…there are many apps on PS with good usecases but with less number of downloads. So the idea of top 100 is bad in itself even if you make a 3rd party unofficial FD repo for it.
Adding proprietary apps to F-Droid for a de-Googled phone strikes me as pointless as running a Linux OS on a computer and then trying to use Windows applications. One is the antithesis of the other.
Ah I see that was deep. I never thought of that “point of degoogling when you still want to use proprietary apps”.
I was merely thinking more from a convenience point of view and a little security too, but yes what you said makes sense.
I was just thinking to share my thoughts here just if it was possible to make de googling process a little easier like if someone want app from top 100 list.
So I think I should close this thread. Thanks for all the efforts and work you guys put in the community.
