Google's assault on F-Droid has begun. They are permitting malicious actors to claim other people's apps and take them over. As we've warned, this is going to destroy F-Droid and independent app distribution around the world. Speak out and help stop them at https://keepandroidopen.org. #keepandroidOpen
I actually don’t understand what is being portrayed in that post, what is the issue there? Maybe I am lacking some background information?
The original post by Muntashir Akon says that someone has registered his apps, but his image says something different, it says that the package name is registered in play already. And the app registration is not opened for those in Play.
I’m guessing he hasn’t added his apps in the play store and that’s what he means by someone taking over his app name? Just trying to understand…
Then the account of keep android open talks of an assault on fdroid. Which seems an overreach from the previous post and image, unless there’s a lot of background well known that is missing from this particular context.
Now, I’m not defending google, I do think they are on full power grab with android and want to reduce the openness of it, and they can go fuck off with that shit. I just don’t see how it all relates in this case.
If a dev would only publish in the past in fdroid, there was nothing stopping anyone from using your app id to upload something to the play store, right? So this whole developer verification doesn’t seem to be the root cause here.
But that’s assuming muntashir meant exactly that by having impersonators. If muntashir had uploaded the apps to the play store, then the message in the image seems to mean that because the package name is the same as in play he can’t register it yet. Maybe that has an effect for fdroid but I can’t see how quite yet.
OK I missed that I could gain more details opening the post by Muntashir (first thought it was a screenshot).
“UPDATE: #Google seems to have fixed the issue anyway. I was able to register both App Manager and Captive Portal Controller in the Android developer verification console.”
“Google has added an “other ways to verify” option now. So, now it may be possible to bypass the 50% rule.”
So it seems the issue was not impersonators, the issue was not fdroid, and there’s no attack whatsoever with his apps from google or anyone. It’s just a shitty implementation of this whole developer registration that just shouldn’t even exist and yes, the whole registration is an attack on devs and open source, but the issues this dev was facing are not an example of it. This is not a story of a developer under attack because he doesn’t want to be registered. This is a story of a developer who is following suit with google and registering, and finding the beta system is shit.
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I actually don’t understand what is being portrayed in that post, what is the issue there? Maybe I am lacking some background information?
The original post by Muntashir Akon says that someone has registered his apps, but his image says something different, it says that the package name is registered in play already. And the app registration is not opened for those in Play.
I’m guessing he hasn’t added his apps in the play store and that’s what he means by someone taking over his app name? Just trying to understand…
Then the account of keep android open talks of an assault on fdroid. Which seems an overreach from the previous post and image, unless there’s a lot of background well known that is missing from this particular context.
Now, I’m not defending google, I do think they are on full power grab with android and want to reduce the openness of it, and they can go fuck off with that shit. I just don’t see how it all relates in this case.
If a dev would only publish in the past in fdroid, there was nothing stopping anyone from using your app id to upload something to the play store, right? So this whole developer verification doesn’t seem to be the root cause here.
But that’s assuming muntashir meant exactly that by having impersonators. If muntashir had uploaded the apps to the play store, then the message in the image seems to mean that because the package name is the same as in play he can’t register it yet. Maybe that has an effect for fdroid but I can’t see how quite yet.
OK I missed that I could gain more details opening the post by Muntashir (first thought it was a screenshot).
“UPDATE: #Google seems to have fixed the issue anyway. I was able to register both App Manager and Captive Portal Controller in the Android developer verification console.”
“Google has added an “other ways to verify” option now. So, now it may be possible to bypass the 50% rule.”
So it seems the issue was not impersonators, the issue was not fdroid, and there’s no attack whatsoever with his apps from google or anyone. It’s just a shitty implementation of this whole developer registration that just shouldn’t even exist and yes, the whole registration is an attack on devs and open source, but the issues this dev was facing are not an example of it. This is not a story of a developer under attack because he doesn’t want to be registered. This is a story of a developer who is following suit with google and registering, and finding the beta system is shit.
Yeah but your interpretation of events don’t sell clicks and ads or encourage artificial outrage. 😄