The future of this elegant and proven system was put in jeopardy last month, when Google unilaterally decreed that Android developers everywhere in the world are going to be required to register centrally with Google. In addition to demanding payment of a registration fee and agreement to their (non-negotiable and ever-changing) terms and conditions, Google will also require the uploading of personally identifying documents[^regid], including government ID, by the authors of the software, as well as enumerating all the unique “application identifiers” for every app that is to be distributed by the registered developer.
If it were to be put into effect, the developer registration decree will end the F-Droid project and other free/open-source app distribution sources as we know them today, and the world will be deprived of the safety and security of the catalog of thousands of apps that can be trusted and verified by any and all. F-Droid’s myriad users5 will be left adrift, with no means to install — or even update their existing installed — applications.
Stop buying their phones and using their services?
And use what?
Go chinese
That is somehow worse
That would involve missing out on apps people may need in their country due to no play store.
And even if a phone like oneplus does, there are still issues. One example being them moving to being less friendly to custom rom devs which ended up killing the custom rom scene. Groups like lineageos don’t appear to support their newer phones so you end up having to use random custom roms from unknown people uploading stuff to telegram which isn’t a great idea for privacy or security.
So its not as simple as just get a Chinese phone or get an unlockable bootloader phone. Have to see if the few more trustworthy custom rom groups support the device.
Degoogled phones, there are plenty.
In any case, you can probably prolong the usage of your current phone for a few extra years without issue. So don’t panic yet.
It’s not the Gapps, it’s Android itself. Have you hit your head?
It isn’t Android since AOSP isn’t effected
“Android” Open Source Project.
You can sideload until they remove the functionality. You can flash a ROM until they lock the bootloaders.
All things that are happening and you seem oblivious to.
What the hell are you talking about? Android is OPEN SOURCE. Degoogled phones will simply modify the codebase to avoid Google limits and bloat, like they are doing literally today? LineageOS, GrapheneOS, /e/OS…
I said degoogled phones, not degoogled apps.
“modify the codebase” Alright good luck with that buddy. Let us know when you’re in the mainframe.
Okay, see you when inevitably all the Android forks keep working fine with sideloading allowed. 😘
Making my next phone a classic flip phone would probably do me a lot of good.
I think I’m almost at that time where I dump the internet. I’m 50 and I was an early adopter. I’m a very frequent user, however this is not the internet we all fought for. It’s been slowly eroded to a corporate money grab and I’m not really down for that anymore. I’m tired and I think the internet needs to go away for me.
I’m pretty much on the Internet to look up information for video games, Fediverse, and write the occasional email. My smart phone is mainly to receive emergency calls from family, coworkers, and the occasional navigation task but they still make GPS units.
Sounds like we’re both old enough to remember that there is life without the Internet. I could do it. Tech companies are out there acting like there’s no alternative.