There's absolutely nothing stopping the author from distributing his app in following ways: - on F-Droid, an app store dedicated for OSS software - on Samsung

There's absolutely nothing stopping the author from distributing his app in following ways: - on F-Droid, an app store dedicated for OSS software - on Samsung Store, an app store preinstalled on most Android phones sold in US and other western world - on Amazon store - on Huawei app store - on their own webpage as a downloadable APK But what they really want is to use Googles distribution system while not paying the margin.