Broken links aside (fix incoming), #FDroid raises the case against the #Google developer forced registration once again.
We'll skip the small talk, go read, and better yet, spread this wide and far: f-droid.org/2025/09/29/google-… so people are made aware, actions can be taken and #Android is kept truly open!
F-Droid and Google's Developer Registration Decree | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository
For the past 15 years1, F-Droid has provided a safe and securehaven for Android users around the world to find and install free and opensource apps. When con...f-droid.org
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อัคคาวิน
in reply to F-Droid • • •Radasbona
in reply to F-Droid • • •I'm wondering: is a stock rom with removed Google Apps still under this restriction?
removed with #shizuku / canta.
#FDroid #android
just a blåhaj
in reply to Radasbona • • •if you disable/remove GMS and GPlay, google cannot do shit to your android
if you root, you can force it to install/replace GMS/GPlay with microG
F-Droid
in reply to just a blåhaj • • •just a blåhaj
in reply to F-Droid • • •They're NOT changing the android base itself. It'd simply be too diffucult. And what does google have access over? GMS and GPlay.They also stated that ADB will still let you install APKs however you want, so if F-Droid supports/adds support for Shizuku, the problem would be mitigated...
...temporairly...Because google's plan is not to keep this, their tone says.
That's why rooting is a good idea. With root you can brute-force literally anything to happen.
F-Droid
in reply to just a blåhaj • • •just a blåhaj
in reply to F-Droid • • •shizuku isn't free (free as in freedom)?
F-Droid
in reply to just a blåhaj • • •Please release the app on F-Droid
YamiYukiSenpai (GitHub)Bolt
in reply to Radasbona • • •@radasbona
Short answer: It depends on the ROM, not any Google apps. If it's from a major manufacturer, probably.
Long answer: It's only on "certified Android" devices, and by that they mean on ROMs that are "certified" by Google, and installed on devices, but you can still replace that "certified" ROM with a non-certified one, such as GrapheneOS, LineageOS, etc, which wouldn't be under the restriction.
android.com/certified/partners…
They clarify in their blog.
android-developers.googleblog.…
Android – Certified - Partners
AndroidF-Droid
in reply to Bolt • • •𝔱𝔯𝔷𝔶𝔤𝔩𝔬𝔴
in reply to Radasbona • • •(though it's been around a month since i've read it, so my memory could be off)
F-Droid
in reply to 𝔱𝔯𝔷𝔶𝔤𝔩𝔬𝔴 • • •el_haych2024
in reply to F-Droid • • •BoloMKXXVIII
in reply to F-Droid • • •Eye reshared this.
Goku
in reply to F-Droid • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Goku • • •@Goku @F-Droid oh lord that's a loaded suggestion...
Insisting a non-profit, donation based, open source project launch an entire hardware business and produce cheap hardware?
It would be astronomically expensive to set up, and the resulting phone would be a budget phone for flagship price... the opposite of what you want. (See the few Linux phone builders out there for reference... and those are companies with investors)
Goku
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •F-Droid
in reply to Goku • • •César Pose
in reply to F-Droid • • •Dan Brown
in reply to F-Droid • • •Reporting to the CMA: Google Android Developer Verification · Danb Blog
Danb BlognovaTopFlex
in reply to F-Droid • • •TIM
in reply to F-Droid • • •Ingo van Lil
in reply to F-Droid • • •While I fully agree with your assessment and hope that Google's plans are stopped, I don't see why F-Droid couldn't register identifiers for distributed apps. There's no need for them to be the same identifiers the developers chose, is there?
My own app is distributed exclusively via F-Droid. I wouldn't mind if the F-Droid builds used an identifier like `org.f-droid.<my-app-id>`.
Benjamin Braatz
in reply to F-Droid • • •Did they already announce if and how they want to force phone vendors to leave that requirement in *their* versions of Android?
If they only lose the title of “certified Android device” but everything else still works, it should be possible to demand from the vendors that they … just undo that for their flavours of Android.
Or is “certified Android device” the requirement imposed by *other* apps to be installable (the thing that makes a lot of banking apps not work on custom ROMs)?
Surely hope that @Fairphone (inactive on the fediverse?) will still allow me to run F-Droid irrespective if Google takes that plan back or not.
F-Droid
in reply to Benjamin Braatz • • •⪨༒𓊈𒆜🅽🅴🆆🅼🅰🅽𒆜𓊉༒⪩
in reply to F-Droid • • •Lyubomir Ganev
in reply to F-Droid • • •Plsik (born in 320 ppm) 🇨🇿🇺🇦🇵🇸
in reply to F-Droid • • •The rest of the population that uses Android won't even notice anything and will continue to download from Google Play whatever the ads show them.
F-Droid
in reply to Plsik (born in 320 ppm) 🇨🇿🇺🇦🇵🇸 • • •Viktoria D. Richards/Uddelhexe
in reply to F-Droid • • •Question for understanding:
In case google isn't stopped by law:
Can in theory, users of custom rom degoogled Android versions in phones still use the F-Droid store like normal?
80% of my Apps now are open source anyways and the other ones ( as of now) work without google services or might be ok with microG.
I' d rather deal with not having Banking- Apps and nfc running on my phone ( not using both from phone anyways) than succumbing to googles world-domination fantasy.
Viktoria D. Richards/Uddelhexe
in reply to F-Droid • • •Ich würde mir auch vom @BMDS Beiträge dazu wünschen, wie die Einstellung zu dieser MonopolisierungsHandlung von Google ist, die faktisch dazu führt, dass die gesamte mobil digitale Alltagsnutzbarkeit von unverzichtbaren Diensten (Banking, Fahrkarten, NFC...) komplett von 2 US Konzernen abhängig gemacht wird.
Google hat damit faktisch komplette Kontrolle über 70+% des Handymarktes und dessen Software + Infrastruktur der EU.
Wohin kann man sich als Bürger wenden?
Jones
in reply to F-Droid • • •Hello 🙂
More or less at half of the page, you have written:
«The F-Droid project cannot require that developers register their apps through Google, but at the same time, we cannot “take over” the application identifiers for the open-source apps we distribute, as that would effectively seize exclusive distribution rights to those applications.»
This passage is unclear to me, could you explain better?
Anyway, i don't understand how google could prevent a software developer to just release their source code and builds without registering themselves and their apps with google, so i guess that the problem would "only" be with developers who want to put their apps on google's store too. I also guess they are many, for obvious reasons; anyway, if google will act accordingly to its announcement, i think f-droid should, if possible, go on distributing apps by those developers who would not choose to comply to google's diktat (while i seem to understand there would be no possible technical solution for those who would choose to comply).
(1/2)
Jones
in reply to Jones • • •anyway, at the end of the post you've written:
«If you are a developer or user who values digital freedom, you can help. Write to your Member of Parliament [europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/hom…], Congressperson [house.gov/representatives/find…] or other representative, sign petitions in defense of sideloading and software freedom, and contact the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) team [digital-markets-act.ec.europa.…] to express why preserving open distribution matters. By making your voice heard, you help defend not only F-Droid, but the principle that software should remain a commons, accessible and free from unnecessary corporate gatekeeping.»
Since i live in italy, i'll certainly try to contact europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/hom… and digital-markets-act.ec.europa.… 🙂
(2/2)
Home | MEPs | European Parliament
www.europarl.europa.eupak0st
in reply to F-Droid • • •F-Droid
in reply to pak0st • • •pak0st
in reply to F-Droid • • •that is true. The actual implementation can cause differences in how they will lock it down. Would the Android SDK binaries enforce the verification? Would we have to build the SDK tools from source to disable it? Perhaps it would be some system service in the ROM itself?
With the recent release changes on AOSP, I feel Google will absolutely make the process as painful as possible to revert the "security enhancement". Technically it would be possible, practically tho...
Tom Ritchford
in reply to F-Droid • • •Signed!
Quibble: it's spelled "provenance", without the "i". 🙂
Thanks for doing this. It's not just the freedom to use our own gear the way we want it, it's the lack of desire to have American companies to tell us what to do.
Larry (Mr.Optimization)
in reply to F-Droid • • •Sabrina Web 📎
in reply to F-Droid • • •Hypothetically, if a developer chooses not to register with gooooogle, but still writes apps and publishes their code on gitea or codeberg or some other repository, can they still have their apps on fdroid? Maybe not on play store, but in fdroid?
Jones reshared this.
Jones
in reply to Sabrina Web 📎 • • •@sabrinaweb71
(i've made this question too, yesterday: todon.nl/@jones/11528919301052…)
Jones
2025-09-29 19:17:57
F-Droid
in reply to Sabrina Web 📎 • • •Jones reshared this.
Jones
in reply to F-Droid • • •@sabrinaweb71
So, correct me if i'm wrong, the matter is this: if the google diktat will be actually enforced, no app not signed by google will be able to run on android.
F-Droid
in reply to Jones • • •Jones
in reply to F-Droid • • •F-Droid
in reply to Jones • • •Jones
in reply to F-Droid • • •F-Droid
in reply to Jones • • •Jones reshared this.
Jones
in reply to F-Droid • • •So f-droid would still work only on fairphones and other very costly degoogled phones, right?
🌸 lily 🏳️⚧️ θΔ ⋐ & ∞
in reply to Jones • • •Jones
in reply to 🌸 lily 🏳️⚧️ θΔ ⋐ & ∞ • • •Thank you 😀
So, it would run only for an even smaller user base of people with lots of money.
🌸 lily 🏳️⚧️ θΔ ⋐ & ∞
in reply to Jones • • •it just means people can't use their existing setup to run the apps, which is mega bullshit (and yes, they shouldn't have to pay more to be able to)
Jones
in reply to 🌸 lily 🏳️⚧️ θΔ ⋐ & ∞ • • •I've searched many times for a degoogled rom supporting the 3 phones i have had (a ~100 euro samsung phone, another one, and the one i currently use, a nokia c-20 that i've bought for 60 euros), and never found one, so it is evident to me that this google diktat, when enforced, would cut out the vast majority of people of the world from the possibility of running free and open source and much much more secure apps on their phones.
Sabrina Web 📎 reshared this.
kainisenni
in reply to Jones • • •@jones
Fairphones aren't degoogled by default, you have to do that yourself. If the Fairphone is running the stock Google-certified ROM, apps from devs not approved by Google (so most on F-Droid) won't install.
Degoogled phones don't have to be costly though, I'm running LineageOS on a budget Motorola from 2019. There are less and less phones with unlockable bootloaders though, and that's a problem because you need that for degoogling.
@fdroidorg @sabrinaweb71
trissc̈hen
in reply to F-Droid • • •@jones @sabrinaweb71 am I getting this right that if hypothetically one would somehow have F-Droid on an affected phone, reproducible builds would still work through F-Droid if the app is older than 2021?
(not that it would matter in practice)
F-Droid
in reply to trissc̈hen • • •Sabrina Web 📎
in reply to F-Droid • • •Nico Christmann
in reply to F-Droid • • •rakoo
in reply to F-Droid • • •> we cannot “take over” the application identifiers for the open-source apps we distribute, as that would effectively seize exclusive distribution rights to those applications.
I'm not sure I completely understand: does this mean that if an app chooses a unique name, say com.something.super.app, then it somehow belongs to google ? You don't want to becomo another central point of apps identification ? Naively it seems like every dev team could just distribute on f-droid with the id they choose, so I don't see what is blocking
F-Droid
in reply to rakoo • • •trissc̈hen
in reply to F-Droid • • •tbh I don’t exactly get how this affects F-Droid at all. Like, if you’re saying it does, I’m sure that’s true, but I don’t understand what Google is intending to do in that regard. Also obviously still incredibly evil of them regardless.
And what Google achieves with that for me (who was about to purchase a new not just Android but Google phone specifically) is making me delay that purchase and more seriously consider some sort of Linux phone instead 🙃
F-Droid
in reply to trissc̈hen • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to F-Droid • • •@F-Droid @trissc̈hen to clarify how this affects F-Droid:
When implemented developers will be required to get their application signed by Google, regardless of whether it's distributed from the play store or not.
This comes about in large part because Google is being forced to allow third party app stores like F-Droid to get more elevated privileges and with it become easier and more accessible to use (among other things, I honestly haven't stayed entirely on top of it).
They're pitching it as a protective measure to prevent malicious sideloads, but the reality is it'll force side loaded apps to pay Google money as if they were on the play store anyways, as well as allow them to exert the same control over them as they do on the play store.
F-Droid
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •@shiri @trisschen Please see floss.social/@fdroidorg/115293… and don't confuse "signed" with "allow to install".
F-Droid
2025-09-30 14:05:38
Un Bourguignon
in reply to F-Droid • • •@R1Rail
Padraic
in reply to F-Droid • • •I've contacted the Digital Markets Act Team.
I think it would be really helpful if you provided a sample text people could use when contacting the DMA team, or local representatives.
Would you consider an online petition too?