Comment by PokedBear
3 months ago
It will be interesting to see how they handle packages from the various f-droid repos. F-droid builds and signs all their apps themselves, so will all of f-droid be covered by a single signing key and developer account? Or will the fact that they take apps from lots of folks bar them from an account?
F-Droid generates a unique key for each app and that key is then reused for all builds of that app. This will probably just require registering the F-Droid public key to the package name with Google.
Google to F-Droid: "no signature for you"
Apple did this to Epic when the EU threatened to intervene.
I'd bet money they'd just ban them; the whole point is to stop users running unapproved applications on their phones.
Unless I misunderstood the question, this is covered in TFA
> The tech giant stresses that this does not mean developers can’t distribute outside of the Play Store through other app stores or via sideloading — Android will remain open in that regard.
You have misunderstood the question, or perhaps buried the lede. 'Open in that regard' is tantamount to not open at all. If you gatekeep being able to load an app to an Android phone behind these processes, you're essentially stuck with no recourse if you, say, have a banned google account, or have some reason you don't wish to send your government ID to these companies.
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Your own quote shows the source of the confusion. OC was asking how will google handle apps that have somebody else signing for them. Your quote talks about letting devs that go through a verification process still side load (though that has no real benefit at that point since google still holds control over you)
How does that jive with this statement:
>The Play Store implemented similar requirements in 2023, but Google is now mandating this for all install methods, including third-party app stores and sideloading where you download an APK file from a third-party source.
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Initially they will help them. Once it becomes widely accepted that sideloading isn't a thing, they will ban them.