What about a "Libre Edition" Retroarch apk?

There was once a time that Retroarch was included in the official F-droid repo, but was removed because it can download external libraries (aka. libretro cores) that might in some cases be “non-free”.

Since then a separate “F-droid compatible” repository was created by libretro… but it doesn’t look like it’s being maintained very well right now (it’s still hosting a very old version).

Recently, libretro started to bundle the cores within the APK releases published in the Google play store, they have 2 versions with different cores bundled (this was done in response to Google also banning the practice of loading external libraries)… I’m wondering if a similar approach could be taken in F-droid but with the libre/free cores.

So the free cores that are GPL-compatible would be bundled in the Retroarch apk, any non-free or license-incompatible core would be excluded, and the downloader that allows obtaining external cores would be disabled.

This means we could have a fully free version of Retroarch. If this was done, would it be suitable for being accepted in the official F-droid repository?

1 Like

Sounds like it could be fine.

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