The future of this elegant and proven system was put in jeopardy last month, when Google unilaterally decreed that Android developers everywhere in the world are going to be required to register centrally with Google. In addition to demanding payment of a registration fee and agreement to their (non-negotiable and ever-changing) terms and conditions, Google will also require the uploading of personally identifying documents[^regid], including government ID, by the authors of the software, as well as enumerating all the unique “application identifiers” for every app that is to be distributed by the registered developer.
If it were to be put into effect, the developer registration decree will end the F-Droid project and other free/open-source app distribution sources as we know them today, and the world will be deprived of the safety and security of the catalog of thousands of apps that can be trusted and verified by any and all. F-Droid’s myriad users5 will be left adrift, with no means to install — or even update their existing installed — applications.
I wish more people focused a bit more on the need to agree to terms and conditions, I didn’t know that was a part of this issue and that massively increases the negative impact of this potential policy change
Google’s terms and conditions are consistently draconian and stupid. Especially if it’s the same terms and conditions applied to the play store, where apps constantly get pulled and devs are always frustrated as hell
They are not stupid, they are just intentionally malicious.
I will always believe that people can’t be asked to read a whole fucking T&C written in legalese to avoid being transformed in a human centipede.
Fuck that bullshit!
“I have read and agree to the Terms” is the biggest lie on the web. Together, we can fix that.
https://tosdr.org/en