I use B4X (RAD tool) app (from Anywhere Software) to write Android apps. B4X allows the easy creation of apps (developed in it for Android) to be multi-platform (i.e. IOS, Windows, Linux). B4A (acronym for Basic4Android) by the same owner/author was just for Android apps’ development.
Points 1 & 2 in the ‘Prepare and compliance check’ section in Submitting to F-Droid Quick Start Guide | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository state that a “FOSS licence file is required and there must only be FOSS dependencies” and “If a proprietary IDE is required then it can’t be included.”.
I asked the owner of Anywhere Software (and author of B4X) about whether B4X met the above requirements His reply was:
“B4A framework is open source. The IDE and compiler aren’t.
With that said, I don’t think that there is a relation between B4A being open source or not and F-Droid. You can make open source apps with B4X.
No plans to open source the IDE for now (and it also depends on third party non-open source components).
The generated Java source code can be open sourced and built with open source tools without relying on the IDE or B4A compiler. I don’t know whether it meets their requirements or not.”.
If Android apps developed by B4X were allowed into F-Droid (since Java presumably meets the above Compliance Check and the Java code generated by B4X is FOSS) it would be helpful to non-professional developers like me. I don’t want to jump through the hoops required by Google to put apps onto its Play Store, especially as I don’t charge for any my apps to be used by others.