alt Hacker NewsDon't love it but (1) it's addressing a serious problem and I'm not sure what the alternative is and (2) if you all remember the starting place, it was staggeringly, dramatically worse, practically a death sentence for F-Droid and seemingly testing the waters for if they could simply power through and do it despite objection.
This is a major course correction that doesn't kill F-Droid. A one time 24 hour hoop to jump through and then never again is monumentally better than losing F-Droid forever.
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It's pretending to address a serious issue while giving Google significant power to limit distribution of apps Google doesn't like, which could sometimes include legal apps that certain governments don't like such as the recently famous ICEBlock.
Google says they don't intend to do that, but even if I believe that's their current intention, they have a strong incentive to do otherwise in the future. Incentives predict outcomes more reliably than intentions.
I say it's pretending because scammers are good at shifting tactics. If convincing users to install malware ceases to be the path of least resistance, they'll convince users to install legitimate remote access utilities, hand over credentials directly, or some other scheme I haven't thought up because I'm not a scammer.
"Meet me in the middle" says the unjust man.
You take a step forward.
He takes a step back.
"Meet me in the middle" says the unjust man.
F-Droid has spent many years trying to step out of the "only for technical/power users" into the "This is a tool that normal phone users should have and use". A one time 24hr wait moves back to the "F-Droid is only for technical users" big time.
Bought a new phone? Moved from iPhone to Android? Want help from your friend/family member/librarian/other to setup your new phone for getting apps? Sorry, you need to come back a day later before you can actually use it.
Guess what the normal/non-tech user does in this 24hr period? Go to Play Store, install a bunch of apps, forget that you had the desire to use an alternative.
This indeed does make F-Droid no longer a tool for normal people, but only a tool for those willing to do a bunch of "Advanced" things on their phone. By definition, not regular users.
It's only a "serious problem" because they want you to think it is.
What's the serious problem?
Is it a serious problem that you can run whatever software you want on your computer? Should we make it so that no one can do that without permission to protect them?
I recommend Cory Doctorow's talk on why this is a serious problem for society:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Coming_War_on_General_Com...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg