This is something the EU should really regulate, unfortunately they are busy regulating oat ~~milk~~ drink and veggie~~burgers~~.
this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2025
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Privacy
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I contacted the EU DMA team a while back. Part of the response:
We have taken note of your concerns and, while we cannot comment on ongoing dialogue with gatekeepers, these considerations will form part of our assessment of the justifications for the verification process provided by Google.
So at least some part of the bureaucracy are aware of it.
The thing I don't understand about any of this, is why can't you comment on ongoing dialogues with the gatekeepers?
I understand the basic tenants of keeping the discussion closed until official statements can be prepared, to prevent the press and the public from going off half cocked. That makes sense for private matters.
This is not private. I can't understand what is the point of negotiating law for people if they can't even see the ongoing process?
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The EU hasn't even been able to stop Apple from doing this shit.
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The EU is actively preventing their own people from leaving the Google ecosystem with the Play Integrity API in their own apps.
I'm confused why so many open source developers think that the EU is going to be the foster parents of FOSS communities
There's a real effort in some EU countries to fund FOSS projects to get out from under US dominated tech.
It's because they did a thing with USB once
the eu is way too busy chewing us boot atm
It's a banker's cartel. Nothing more.
Pretty sure the EU was designed to serve the interests of carnists and other capitalists.
Considering Google and Apple both donate to Trump, we really need an alternative: Linux mobile OS. A linux OS that can be installed on a range of phones, from cheap to more expensiove. Just buy the phone and install the OS, as you do on PCs.
Good linux mobile OSs already exist, but phones' hardware is still proprietary and messed up, so it is very difficult to provide a good hardware support for those mobile OSs
Yes, the bottleneck isn't software, it's hardware. We need phones with unlocked bootloaders
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When will F-Droid stop working on stock android? I want to try and change to Graphene before then.
Try Graphene today. IT WORKS
Samsung s22 and s25, checking in. Graphene won't be viable for the vast, overwhelming majority of Android users today or in the coming seasons.
I hope people figure out some kind of virtualization/docker-containerization solution to the coming Goo-lag.
Samsung s22 and s25
I'm still holding some hope that maybe Samsung's flavor of the OS won't have the restriction of requiring Google keys. Specially considering that Samsung has its own "Galaxy Store" with app submissions controlled by them, not Google.
Though it's possible they might simply extend the signatures accepted to include also the ones signed by them ^^U ..still I'm holding unto hope, because it would give them a competitive edge to remove the restriction so they might be incentivized to do it.
Would be nice, but I imagine that Samsung would both need to actually be impacted in an meaningful way with their store, and find some way to prevent Play Services (which they have to meet requirements to be able to load on their devices) from just nope-ing non-registered apps. Both of which I seriously doubt would happen.
They have already been working pretty close with Google on things that removed their actual Tizen OS from stuff like their watches in favor of merging their code into Android Wear OS. Would also guess that they might just work something out to either force apps on their store to be signed by Samsung and cleared by Google. Or that they just require apps on their store to only be listed after registering with Google. Not like Samsung really cares about supporting side-loading if the apps aren't in their (or Google's) store.
Sadly I think only a OEM like Samsung would have the massive levels of hardware sales and money for making a real fight against Google. F-Droid and other alt-stores or projects lack both and are easy to ignore. If Samsung were to be actually concerned about this, then I think we would have already seen them filing lawsuits and pushing posts/news articles condemning Google's plans like F-Droid keeps doing (aside from lawsuits due to money).
You are probably right.. it's just one hope I had, I'm not expecting it to happen, but I'll be hopeful until the end.
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
Nothing wrong with finding small hopes here and there where you can. I too had briefly thought about Samsung's store (I have an S24 Ultra, Tab S8+, and my old S20+) maybe being large and known enough by more users than F-Droid. But their lack of press releases pushing back on Google was what told me enough. If Samsung's store was actively used more than the Play Store on their phones (and had enough really popular apps that weren't also on the Play Store), then it would at least be something.
Sadly even if Samsung's store is able to somehow get a pass by Google, I highly doubt that the devs of apps that are only on F-Droid would list them on there. And would still only help Samsung devices (though I know I would start using Samsung's store a lot more if those devs did list them on there). Though I might find reasons to use my S20+ for some apps that I like having but don't use daily, and my tablet is on Android 15 so it will be used for stuff I use more often (never thought I would be excited for it to not get major updates).
The main actively used daily app that I am dreading losing (due to the current dev not planning to ever list their active fork on Play Store) is SyncThing-Fork on my Android devices (use different SyncThing apps for PC/Steam Deck). It has been the only multi-platform sync program that actually works correctly for my password vault on my Android devices. Though it is possible that the dev might get it whitelisted, but I am not going to hold my breath. As the main dilemma on a per app level is that the more apps that fall in line ends up supporting Google's actions, but at the same time not getting whitelisted means just going away (at least on fully updated Android 16+ devices).
I'm hopeful that the hackers will win. I will never underestimate the power of motivated, scorned engineers.
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I don't have time today
Ok, I’ll extend your deadline til Monday then. ;)
Except for stuff you really need like online banking, tap payments and digital ids
All my banking apps and credit card apps have worked flawlessly on Graphene OS. You're correct that tap to pay doesn't work, which is a bummer. But that is just Google spyware as well, honestly.
I heard about this a while ago, but I remember the GrapheneOS team talking about suing Google if they didn't allow them to pass play integrity checks like they should be able to, but Google just doesn't let them. That's the only reason tap to pay doesn't work and some baking apps have issues, its Google purposefully limiting graphene OS so they have a competitive edge somewhere.
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Plenty of bank apps work just fine. None of the ones I've tried had problems, except Santander, which works perfectly after changing a setting.
Not here in Norway. You need BankID which is an app that well, requires a lot of stuff.
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There's nothing set in stone yet. Google just committed to doing it is all that's happened so far. But the response against it has been pretty heavy and we'll see how it goes. We have to speak up right now and organize our communities like this post is doing.
LOL. There's dozens of us here.
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I honestly didn't realize how the fdroid deployment worked, and now I'm gonna be way less skeptical of apps I see there.
I do not go to Google play until apps on f-droid prove inadequate for my usage.
Will the F-Droid website shutdown as a whole if the project ends?
I've gone back to flip phone. Yes, an XP3 Plus running android; but with no app store and no apps that use Internet. Data, and WIFI is off forever. It just comes with basic apps out of the box. Nothing Google is on it. It's just for phone calls.
And I've gone back to a standard MP3 player. All this because the smartphone ecosystem is utterly chaotic and fragile. Anything smart is nothing but a headache to me now. Smartphones are anything but convenient to me today (they are more like dopamine slot machines with the trash social media apps that come pre-installed on them to keep people scrolling).
But I have an old Samsung tablet running LineageOS that I just use for reading. Never put it online. And I see no reason to update any apps. Maybe in the future, I might consider installing other apps (highly unlikely). But I'm fine with how it is. And since Syncthing is no longer an option on Android, I'll just use Rsync to sync my books directly to the micro SD card I use with it.
I don't use anything Google anymore (yes, not even YouTube). And I really don't want to install Google's shitty app store and make a new Google account (after getting rid of all my Google accounts). This is why I'm wondering what the plan is for the F-Droid project.
Is it time to just dump anything Android too? Unless it's a scaled down version of Android that comes with the device like my flip phone?
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