[fwn]

It really depends. Many apps currently cannot be distributed through the stores or the maintainers have to endure a lot of bullying to stay in the stores. (Think NewPipe et al)

In these cases, the middlemen like Google are the hostile party. Essentially the threat actor. It is natural: big tech is big tech, because they are very good at limiting user choice.

For these applications, Obtainium is brilliant.

It also shows that the store model that everyone is working to enshrine in digital policy is not the necessity that Big Tech would have everyone believe.

[pjmlp]

Mostly because certain apps refuse to adopt Android APIs, or insist NDK is a full blown GNU/Linux userspace, contrary to Android team official position on the matter.

[rpdillon]

The fact that the Android team's official position on API usage determines what software I get to install is exactly my problem with this gatekeeping.

The latest victim of this travesty is the removal of syncthing from the play store and the subsequent discontinuation of the app. This was ostensibly due to syncthing's failure to leverage the storage access framework to access files on Android devices. In reality, developers were benchmarking the storage access framework as somewhere around 50 times slower than direct system access, and that made it infeasible for usage in apps like Syncthing. That bug has been open for years, and the Android team has done nothing other than claim it's fixed when benchmarks show otherwise.

So I'm not sold at all on the value of these gatekeeping stores that have black box approval processes with changing rules. It is a system that is set up to be evil because it can reject and accept on a whim with no accountability. We should not so easily give up on installing the software of our choosing on the devices we purchase.

[__jonas]

How does that apply to F-Droid though? I don't think they are bullying any of the app maintainers, NewPipe seems to be on there?

[fluidcruft]

Honestly I started using obtainium because I can't figure out why F-Ddoid builds are a month behind. RedReader became completely broken and needed the newer version. Not sure what's up with that lag. It's extremely frustrating.

[g-b-r]

Never had a problem with RedReader, strange.

Anyhow, when the apps stop being updated, it's usually due to something that was added that doesn't make them compliant with F-Droid's policies anymore; or, they changed something in the release process without telling F-Droid.

Other times, the apps were set to be updated only at the developer's request, and for some reason they still haven't done that request (some developers deliberately update F-Droid less frequently, to be more confident of not giving bugged releases to the F-Droid usere).

The normal delay, due to their manual (and lazy) signing process, is from few days to about ten