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Nextcloud cries foul over Google Play Store app rejection (www.theregister.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 143 points 1 year ago (34 children)

Just switch to the F-Droid version.

Better: make sure all the apps you use come from F-Droid

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  • [–] 113 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    This works very well for tech enthusiasts and people who self-host nextcloud at home.

    The issue is when you are a government or university, it becomes harder to get all your users (which are probably not all tech savvy) to install a third party app store deal with the Android warnings about installing from third-parties, etc etc.

    And this is probably the user base Google are targeting with this move (assuming it's malicious) . When the higher ups complain that their files are not syncing and need to install things with a special procedure they sometimes wonder why they are not using M365 or Google which seems hassle free.

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  • [–] 36 points 1 year ago

    Not to mention the "see this big alert saying this isn't safe? Well for this one time it /is/ safe so do so" While curbing the mentality of "oh it was safe last time so it must be safe this time"

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  • [–] 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (10 children)

    It's not as simple as telling people to use F-Droid. People with non-rooted phones won't get automatic updates via F-Droid which is a big hurdle. Unless I'm misremembering? I wouldn't know because I run rooted CalyxOS now. Last time I used F-Droid on a plain Android phone is a while ago for me.

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  • [–] 29 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    They added that a while ago for all users on Android 12 and up

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    In the Basic version only, last time I checked the "original" F-Droid couldn't do it. And there's also some minimum API level an app has to target to be eligible for automatic updates (found that out through updating microg and having to click "update" still)

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago*

    People with non-rooted phones won’t get automatic updates via F-Droid which is a big hurdle.

    Not true if the app to update targets a high enough API version and if you use F-Droid Basic.

    NOTE: The Basic version of F-Droid Client has a reduced feature set (e.g. no nearby share and no panic feature). It targets Android 13 and can do unattended updates without privileged extension or root.

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Obtaniun > F-droid > Aurora

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    What is the point of obtainium ? Over fdroid?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    You get apps a couple days earlier

    But it comes with a huge downside: if dev goes rogue or gets hacked, you could install a malicious version of the app that doesn't match the source

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    "If dev goes rougue"

    Isnt that a risk for all app stores?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    For fdroid the app is compiled on fdroid servers when dev tags a new release on GitHub. So the app matches the source, it's not possible to put a tainted APK to download

    Now, if the malicious code is slowly added to the source over the course of an year like it happened with the xz utils, this won't change the result, but it's easier to do so with a compiled binary. Release clean source and infected binary, it will take a longer time to get caught

    For the closed source app stores, on iOS there's the manual inspection (which is not infallible especially if they timebomb or geofence the bad feature) and for Google there's the automated inspection (which fails often seeing the news) that should find problems

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    Obtainium is better, get the apps directly from the source

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  • [–] 35 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    I actually like that the F-Droid maintainers check over the apps and warn about anti-features/stop offering new versions if they enshittify.

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  • [+] -18 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Their apps also cause tons of problems compared to the ones directly from the source

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    How so? OOTL here

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  • [+] -10 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    They have problems with the build process and verification, also the software is sometimes out of date on fdroid. In addition I dont personally want someone else curating my software library.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    More like F-Droid cares about things like reproducible builds and other best practices, and sloppy upstream projects sometimes have a problem coping. But as I understand it that's typically the upstream developers' problem, not F-Droid's.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Expand on this please. I am unfamiliar.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Its an open source software manager, you put in a source (like github) and it manages it (even doing auto updates).

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