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I was lurking on reddit and found out this post, I guess from the owner of @fdroidorg@floss.social .

I really hope that they will find a solution, I think that a lot of people depend on the good state of F-droid

    • vortexal@lemmy.ml
      2·
      11 months ago

      How do other repositories handle this? Do they just use F-Droid to process the apps and then just add the F-Droid version of that app to their repository, or is there another method they use?

      • lgsp@feddit.itOP
        4·
        6 months ago

        F-droid Is multiple things

        • An app (client side) that allows users to install apps from many repos
        • A repo system (server side) that allows anyone to host apps in multiple versions
        • A build system that guarantees that the binary apks are built from the sources

        The official f-droid repo hosts only apps built with the f-droid build system. The binaries are signed with the f-droid key and in general are different from the binaries of the same apps that you can find elsewhere, like the GitHub of the apps themseves.

        For example IzzyOnDroid repo uses f-droid repo system to host the binaries of many Foss apps as found from each GitHub repo, so not from the f-droid build system.

        • vortexal@lemmy.ml
          12·
          11 months ago

          So that would mean that, unless I’m wrong, the closest thing to an alternative for F-Droid that currently exists would be Obtainium. Obtainium is the only other android app that I’m aware of that can install/update apps directly from sources like GitHub.

          • lgsp@feddit.itOP
            3·
            6 months ago

            Like you say Obtanium is able to grab the compiled apks from many different sources, like GitHub release pages and f-droid 1st and 3rd party repos.

            F-droid, on the other hand,bgrab the sources from many repos, compiles and signs them, so that all the apks from f-droid repo are guaranteed to be compiled from the relative source, without the addition of anything (tracker, malware…). The same cannot be said (in the sense of technically guaranteed, not in the sense that they are not honest) for the apks you get from GitHub, which are uploaded from the various manteiners.

            Edit: in a sense “f-droid build system and repo” and Obtanium are different and complementary:

            • fdroid is a repo that gives transparency from source to binary of the apks and contains a certain subset of Foss apps

            • Obtanium is a system that aims at giving the greatest amount of apps, without looking too much at where that come from

            • vortexal@lemmy.ml
              3·
              11 months ago

              Yeah, that’s why I said that Obtainium was “the closest thing to an alternative for F-Droid”. If F-Droid goes down because of the current state of things, it would impact all of the other clients and repos. Meaning that Obtainium, while it does work completely differently and it’s not perfect, would be the closest thing to an alternative for F-Droid until someone else makes a real F-Droid alternative. Once again, I will state that I could be wrong, I don’t have perfect knowledge of the internet and therefor, wouldn’t know if someone has already made a more direct alternative to F-Droid that no one has probably even heard of.