'F-Droid' App for Android

ingolftopf

To take advantage of Android's great potential and advantage over Apple's iOS, you need 'F-Droid'.
The alternative, open source, better, more secure app store.
This is not available from Google Play, must be downloaded directly from the website.
https://f-droid.org/

Before that, the Google Android function:
"Unknown sources.
Allow installation of apps from unknown sources" must be activated with a tick.
This can be deactivated later after the installation of apps.
Newer the Google Android system, more hidden is this function.

Google warns against this installation.
In general, you should also be very careful with unknown apps.
With F-Droid and its apps, however, there are no concerns.
On the contrary, the F-Droid apps are checked better than those from Google.
It is a pleasure to browse there.

Eggcorn

@ingolftopf From the homepage:

F-Droid is an installable catalogue of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) applications for the Android platform.

In other words: It's for open-sorce purists. Vivaldi wouldn't be allowed in the store, because Vivaldi is closed-source.

Catweazle

@anoni , nice, but more important and urgend that Vivaldi need a own store for extensions, because of Google M3, a lot of important security and privacy extensions in the Chrome Store not longer exists (content blocker, script apps, proxies, etc) in January 2023.

DoctorG

F-Droid is not open for Vivaldi software.
See https://f-droid.org/de/docs/Inclusion_Policy/

Catweazle

@DoctorG , although in practice they do not take it so on foot, see for example

alt text

There are also others where the source is not completely free and they are on F-Droid but with the indication to this.

DoctorG

in 2021 a dev said:

We did consider F-droid among other APK stores, but since Vivaldi isn't fully open source, we can't add the app to F-droid.

DoctorG

@Catweazle The the F-Droid people are completely freaking out. The "Inclusion_Policy" rules to be applied reads as a sort of ultra-religious sectarian FOSSism. :runaway:

LonM

One possible avenue is that vivaldi maintains a repository, which users can then add into f-droid by themselves.

I think linux distributions use a similar method where vivaldi maintains the repo for distribution, and it's added when you install the app to your package manager.

DoctorG

@LonM Some Linux repros have Vivaldi volunteer users who are maintainers for this package.

If someone wants to be a official maintainer for a APK to upload on F-Droid, this person should contact Vivaldi and F-Droid team. I guess it is easier to be allowed from Vivaldi to upload the APKs than by F-Droid FOSSees.

Just ask our QA team member @Ruarí

Dr.Flay

I use several added repos in F-Droid for non-opensource projects.

There is an easy way to have vivaldi available from the main repo. Only upload an open source updater for Vivaldi.
Degoogled devices need alternative apps to update their regular closed source apps.
You can already get these in F-Droid,

Eggcorn

@Dr-Flay said in 'F-Droid' App for Android:

There is an easy way to have vivaldi available from the main repo. Only upload an open source updater for Vivaldi.

Why would F-Droid allow that? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of banning closed-source apps?

Obiwan2208

@Eggcorn just take a look in the main page:

Spacial remark on 'Free' and 'Open'

Simple and clear it's how the F-Droid owners want to manage it.

Catweazle

@Obiwan2208 , yes, but see my screenshot, it's one of several examples in F-Droid with apps which are not 100% FOSS. You can find them in the list of apps, which don't have a download icon in this list, to download them, you must open the app in F-Droid where is the description, from there you can download it.

Eggcorn

@Obiwan2208 Not really: I'm still not seeing why they'd permit something that seems to just be a loophole out of their rules. Am I missing something here?

Obiwan2208

@Catweazle You can. But you shouldn't download from 'Donwload F-Droid' link because it targets (always) to the market's APK, you have to go down a little until you find the first 'Download APK'. Only the first one because the below 'Download APK's correspond to previous versions.

Regarding the fact that's not entirely free, it may be because it's a port from another market, that has had its analytics removed and doesn't store info as it will show generic ads. Sure it still keeps a small part with copyrights from the original app.

Dr.Flay

There are plenty of free open source apps in F-Droid that allow access to paid for services and/or closed source further up the chain.
They include a warning in F-Droid and class it as an undesirable feature.

You can currently find apps in F-Droid that allow you to update or install from other services such as google play, apk-mirror and aptoide, where you can find lots of closed source apps

Catweazle

@Dr-Flay , also in Google Play Store there are some FOSS apps (few), but I use F-Droid for various reasons, not necessarily to have a FOSS app, although I generally prefer it, but I'm more interested in avoiding Google as much as possible in apps , have good privacy, are not cluttered with advertising pop-ups, without uneeded permissions and have good functionality. In Google Play Store all this isn't guar.anteed (Play Protect is a better placebo)