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> It's a huge undertaking building an app for Android today without using Google's services, and sometimes even impossible. F-Droid developers manage to do it.
by 0815test 7y ago
> It's a huge undertaking building an app for Android today without using Google's services, and sometimes even impossible.
F-Droid developers manage to do it. Sure, they might not publish their apps on the Google-Play Store (some do, actually) but so what? Any Android user can freely download these entirely open apps and install them on their own, by pre-checking a box in the phone settings. That's still more than you can say about iOS!
- kuschku 7y agoI’m a publishing apps on F-Droid myself, so I’m speaking from experience there. Right now I’ve spent months on getting a full clean-room reversed version of Google’s Firebase Cloud Messaging system’s client library working, and we’re still nowhere close to that. The final goal being that we can have one, fully GPL app, which can utilize FCM if it’s installed on the phone, either through the proprietary Google Play Services, or through microG, but which can also work without it otherwise (while also avoiding any tracking or telemetry) And trust me if I say Google’s making this for us devs harder with every update.
- anoncake 7y ago> Right now I’ve spent months on getting a full clean-room reversed version of Google’s Firebase Cloud Messaging system’s client library working Thank you for that.
- m3adow 7y ago> Right now I’ve spent months on getting a full clean-room reversed version of Google’s Firebase Cloud Messaging system’s client library working Thank you for that! I'm very sceptical of Googles "soft lock-in" and will switch to MicroG Lineage sooner or later. So every inch helps.