TL;DR: Yearly reminder - Do as I say, not as I do
Last year: Why use Github, why not use Savannah, others, or self-host?
F-Droid in essence says use free and open source software, particularly on Android. Am I wrong this is a subset of a general encouragement to use free and open source software as much as possible?
Proposal: Every app in F-Droid developed on Github, or on other non-free centralized “services”, should be tagged with non-free network services, or another anti-feature tag. These apps promote non-free network services - To file bugs or do any sort of development interaction, users must also use those non-free network services. The links appear in F-Droid app without any identification or warning, until tapped. IMO this is a bad thing.
This promotion of non-free network services is contrary to the purpose of F-Droid and should be highlighted. If the pervasive use of non-free development systems wasn’t already obvious to users, see here for some numbers: Statistics: Apps with summary/description by language at f-droid.org - #6 by linsui
Disclaimer: I feel I don’t understand the real reasons, tenets, or philosophy underpinnings of F-Droid. Or I understand the theory, but not the practical application and drawing of lines. Sometimes I want to try to advocate for using F-Droid to friends, associates or contacts, but there are huge stumbling blocks when trying to give a consistent story. Why should they use free and open source software on their devices, when developers use non-free software and services on theirs? People don’t like being told “do as I say, not as I do.”
I am aware the original developer of F-Droid previously developed proprietary games software for Windows, IIUC. Did they change philosophy, or what really led to promoting free and open source software, for Android?