Oddbean

A FOSS app on GitLab is as centralized as the Google app store? It seems odd to take that strong of a position and then think Microsoft's GitHub of all things is the answer. I think it's cool. It's just confusing and contradictory. I don't see how centralization is being solved here. That's why I wonder what the goal is. Because if this is the entire goal then I'm either a moron or something doesn't add up.

Yes, the app is FOSS, but the app is the least important part of F-droid. The key is the catalog of apps that is extremely controlled by a few individuals that review. To give you an idea, Firefox is not opensource enough for F-Droid's review board. Which is bonkers. To me, as an app developer that publishes constantly to both Google and F-Droid, the F-droid review board has been way more controlling of what I can do in the app than what Google does. Which is also bonkers. But again, neither Google, nor F-droid is there to decentralize things from themselves. Both are incentivized to keep as much control as possible. And that's my hole point to move away to Obtainium. FOSS doesn't mean necessarily mean decentralized.

Product pages like yours https://github.com/vitorpamplona/amethyst should really highlight that straight APKs from Obtainium or GitHub or whatever are the preferred download. Because of different signatures the app source can't be easily changed later, it requires a reinstall with migrating data from the old to the new install, which can be a hassle. Ran into this the other day wanting to install SimpleX from GitHub after originally getting it from Google Play.

There is no "review board". If the code doesn't compile using only free software, it is rejected. F-droid is about pure open source. Way too many random apks from the internet are loaded with 3rd party tracking, at the least. Anyone can setup their own f-droid repo and serve up their own apks. Izzydroid, divested, guardian project, calyx, cromite, etc have all done this. Obtanium is basically a fancy curl interface. It doesn't verify anything and so long as the binary blob downloads, you can install it. Its no different than a user browsing and downloading binaries off the internet. F-droid needs lots of work, and it's a constant work in progress, but I feel it's vastly better than the alternatives right now.

I'm not really supposed to ask yet as it's invite only, but have you seen accrescent.app? It's a much more developer and user friendly app store. I'm sure they'd love to have Amethyst on there if you asked.

Maybe I am a moron. I didn't realize it's letting the user input the location of the repo. It looked like it was only using GitHub at first. That's pretty cool if it's handling updates from wherever the repo is.