Comment by takluyver
10 days ago
The umbrella organisation signing apps is not impossible, as far as I know. But it would need to be pretty cautious, because if Google revokes its registration, that could block all the apps it has signed at once.
It's hard to see how you could get the necessary level of careful code review with just volunteer effort. But I suspect that most developers who don't want to register with Google are also unlikely to pay money to a third party to work around this.
With enough developers, revoking that cert would affect too many users, so Google would be forced to be careful. It will sort of be like devs unionizing. As far as review goes, not having the money or time to review code sounds exactly like the problem Google is trying to eradicate, because right now when your app causes problems you can just create a different account and start over without risking your reputation.