Comment by dandersch
2 months ago
packages on f-droid list all required permissions explicitly, and the mentioned permission seems to be listed as "query all packages: Allows an app to see all installed packages.". It doesn't mark the app as having "anti-features", but you can at least make a more informed decision this way.
That's pretty cool, but the article says that most apps that are doing this sort of thing aren't using the query all packages permission and instead are using the facility to provide a specific list of apps they're checking for, which is not permission-gated.
It is. It specifically says that the apps must be declared in the manifest like other permissions. So it's a specific permission for each app really. F-Droid could query that if it wants to (not sure if it does)
Did you stop reading before the post got to the MAIN loophole that doesn't require the list of apps in the manifest? How does F-droid describe MAIN?
2 replies →
> It doesn't mark the app as having "anti-features"
I suppose they must be too busy ticking off "anti-features" like "can communicate with non-Free services" to notice that sort of thing.
(No, really. F-Droid will tag applications like a Mastodon client as having "anti-feature: Non-Free Network Services", presumably because it can be configured to connect to servers running non-free software?)