Comment by shiandow
25 days ago
I have no trust in a solution that mostly benefits the proposer.
By all means let people curate and use safe lists of software, but let's not pretend that making the life harder for the few registries containing solely open source and vetted software is in any way about making people safer.
This solution clearly mostly benefits the ignorant phone users of the world who are susceptible to scams. There is a minuscule number of people sideloading Android apps on their phones compared to the greater population.
Like I strongly believe that sideloading should be possible on phones, I don't even do it myself anymore but it can be very helpful and is part of what makes the Android platform fundamentally more open than iOS. I was VERY opposed to their original idea of closing off sideloading altogether, but having to mark it in your settings manually seems like a very good compromise.