yes I understand, but I was just mentioning that the process is convoluted for everyone involved. people tend to forget the troubles of devs and maintainers.
No, that convoluted process will let people install the apps directly from play store. The process to “sideload” (not really sideloading but let’s just say it is for simplicity) is a different convoluted process.
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, 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.
The F-Droid project cannot require that developers register their apps through Google, but at the same time, we cannot “take over” the application identifiers for the open-source apps we distribute, as that would effectively seize exclusive distribution rights to those applications.
(implying that even non-play store apps needs Devs to give their info to google)
There are to separate flows. One flow is for developers to register with google. That’s the one you described. There’s another flow for Android users to install apps from unregistered devs (“sideload” app).
Convoluted process where the developer of the app has to sell their soul to Google
No, I was talking about the convoluted process of downloading, not uploading.
yes I understand, but I was just mentioning that the process is convoluted for everyone involved. people tend to forget the troubles of devs and maintainers.
No, that convoluted process will let people install the apps directly from play store. The process to “sideload” (not really sideloading but let’s just say it is for simplicity) is a different convoluted process.
(implying that even non-play store apps needs Devs to give their info to google)
source: https://f-droid.org/en/2025/09/29/google-developer-registration-decree.html
granted, this is a secondary source, but it does link the primary source within the quoted text.
There are to separate flows. One flow is for developers to register with google. That’s the one you described. There’s another flow for Android users to install apps from unregistered devs (“sideload” app).