F-Droid is an installable catalogue of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) applications for the Android platform. The client makes it easy to browse, install, and keep track of updates on your device.
The author of this article completely misses the point of F-droid. They clearly are used to a world of proprietary software that takes “security” over freedom
So yes I did read the article and no it doesn’t change anything. If your going to make an argument you shouldn’t just link to someone else’s work. Part of the problem with the internet is no one thinks for tuemselves
The reason F-Droid builds from source is to ensure that they can enforce their inclusion criteria. If you go outside F-Droid you lose that guarantee. For example, self-published apks in github or google play may contain anti-features or proprietary code that are forbidden by the F-Droid standards.
From another point of view, what you call a single point of failure is a third party that represents the interests of the user community, independent from individual developers. This is the same model used in GNU/Linux distributions, and Drew DeVault explains here the role that software distributions play in the free software community.
Of course, this represents a trade-off, in that you are placing trust in the software distribution instead of or in addition to the upstream developer. The question is, how can you solve the problem without foregoing F-Droid’s inclusion standards? The answer is reproducible builds, where F-Droid builds from source and compares to the developer’s apk, and publishes the developer’s apk with their signature if the build reproduces successfully.
Until Reproducible builds are the norm in the Android free software world, I accept the trade-off because I value having software freedom in my computing, and I know I can’t trust upstream developers to care about that as much as F-Droid or I do.
Everything the F-droid team does is out in the open. Your welcome to audit it once in a while and suggest changes to make it better. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind the help.
F-droid is the best tool we got. Its not a silver bullet but it is better than anything else I’ve seen
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How does a supply chain attack work?
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I actually would go for the main repo as all the software in the main repo is reviewed by the main Dev team
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The author of this article completely misses the point of F-droid. They clearly are used to a world of proprietary software that takes “security” over freedom
So yes I did read the article and no it doesn’t change anything. If your going to make an argument you shouldn’t just link to someone else’s work. Part of the problem with the internet is no one thinks for tuemselves
Removed by mod
The reason F-Droid builds from source is to ensure that they can enforce their inclusion criteria. If you go outside F-Droid you lose that guarantee. For example, self-published apks in github or google play may contain anti-features or proprietary code that are forbidden by the F-Droid standards.
From another point of view, what you call a single point of failure is a third party that represents the interests of the user community, independent from individual developers. This is the same model used in GNU/Linux distributions, and Drew DeVault explains here the role that software distributions play in the free software community.
Of course, this represents a trade-off, in that you are placing trust in the software distribution instead of or in addition to the upstream developer. The question is, how can you solve the problem without foregoing F-Droid’s inclusion standards? The answer is reproducible builds, where F-Droid builds from source and compares to the developer’s apk, and publishes the developer’s apk with their signature if the build reproduces successfully.
Until Reproducible builds are the norm in the Android free software world, I accept the trade-off because I value having software freedom in my computing, and I know I can’t trust upstream developers to care about that as much as F-Droid or I do.
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Everything the F-droid team does is out in the open. Your welcome to audit it once in a while and suggest changes to make it better. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind the help.
F-droid is the best tool we got. Its not a silver bullet but it is better than anything else I’ve seen