Thanks to the admins who merged my topic into the existing ones. Sorry I didn’t find and comment in those. Anyway, my technical questions have been mostly answered here, although the update by @thore is a bit concerning. But one question remains unanswered;
Given the enshittification of everything else they touch (search, GChat, Wave, Orkut, Buzz, Reader, even Mozilla indirectly), this was probably inevitable. It’s been happening by a thousand tiny cuts for a long time, but seems to be reaching the end game now.
It may be necessary for the libre mobile community to refocus on getting more apps ported to Mobile GNU (postmarketOS, PureOS et al), getting more distros ported to more mobile hardware. As well as strategies for getting more fully (or at least mostly) libre mobiles into play.
I can see why you’d be concerned about these potential changes. If Google enforces stricter rules like requiring a minimum API level for all apps, it could definitely impact F-Droid apps as well, especially if they aren’t updated to meet those standards. For now, sideloading is still allowed, but it’s possible that future Android versions might make it harder to install apps from third-party sources. It’s something we’ll have to keep an eye on, but hopefully, F-Droid and other platforms will find ways to adapt if these changes do come into play.
Arceus AOS will try to allow as many unupdated applications as possible to be installed, but it will remind users that applications built for really old Androids (In comparison to the device’s Android version) might not be secure or stable, and may run into problems.