14 ms·

Curation and decentralization is better than millions of apps

436 points by nafnlj 4y ago

aaron695 4y ago
vorpalhex 4y ago
Curation != moderation.
- CharlesW 4y ago
  That's what they're saying, which is ridiculous. "F-Droid gives you selected apps by default without bans or censorship" is positively thrilling cognitive dissonance.
  - senko 4y ago
    You conveniently left out a followup sentence: > F-Droid also makes it easy for anyone to publish their own repository, with their own curation rules.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    "We're not manipulating history, we're improving it."
  - isaacaggrey 4y ago
    I'm biased to appreciate that F-Droid even exists but providing a default list is not cognitive dissonance, and what you've said suggests that you may have missed the author's point. You can connect whatever "collection of apps" source you desire but you're correct that you do get the "F-Droid List" out of the box. It may feel odd to show no apps when initially using F-Droid but, in theory, one improvement may be to have the user explicitly choose a source list and maybe the "F-Droid List" is first in the list among others. Going in that direction would also help expose that particular feature as I wasn't even aware that you could add / change sources for F-Droid, which sounds like if easy enough to add may be an easier avenue to self publish apps than the major app stores.
- hinkley 4y ago
  Curation becomes moderation when you get too big. It's the reason that anti-trust laws work differently than the rules that apply to mom & pop shops. It's a constant source of friction with quasi-monopolists, whose employees bristle about how they'd feel if they went independent and their own company was held to these standards. Your $10M company doesn't have to do this stuff. Nor your $1B company 9 times out of 10. But if you're FAANG you're goddamned right you have to follow these extra rules. What I'd hope we'd get in this space here is metacuration. Give me a curated list of curators for subject areas. I want a feed that's 30% environmentalism, 20% futurism, and a mix of random stuff I should care about but maybe don't look at too often. I believe this reduces the censorship element by splitting responsibility into more of a chain.
  - guntherhermann 4y ago
    > Give me a curated list of curators for subject areas. I would love this. The closest I can think is a manually-curated RSS feed, and https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome
- soco 4y ago
  Also decentralization is rather contributing to generate those millions of apps - repo A will have a different version of App M than repo B or a fork and anyway similar apps but from different sources and... well good luck.
- musk_micropenis 4y ago
  Moderation is a part of curation. What is your objection to the term in this case?
guntherhermann 4y ago
I add https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/ https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/ as a repo, it includes logseq (which alternatively you can just download from logseq's github repo)
carewell 4y ago
I have been using Android since Nexus 2 and iPhone since 6s. Never in my life I felt like I have experienced censorship in default app stores. If they are against the monopolized market make a clear argument, preferably consumer-focused. Don’t hide behind “censorship” and abstract ideas that have proven not to scale - such as users should be able to chose who they trust. This shows such an insane disconnect from the reality of the vast majority of consumers that it’s laughable to include it. And as usual, a great example of a censorship free open market - China.
- Bilal_io 4y ago
  > Never in my life I felt like I have experienced censorship in default app stores. You're thinking of censorship as a consumer that I presume lives in a developed country. Consumers elsewhere can face censorship [0][1]. I hope this can change your perspective a little bit. 0. Apple takes down Quran app in China https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58921230.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58921230.amp 1. Apple Removes New York Times Apps From Its Store in China https://nyti.ms/2hTHtWd https://nyti.ms/2hTHtWd
  - carewell 4y ago
    I mean… yes, censorship exists in many countries, including the US. If China forced _Apple_ to abide by their rules I struggle to imagine how an alternative store would avoid that. Biggest Chinese app stores are tightly managed by the state, same as the entirety of their tech market.
    - eighthave 4y ago
      With free software and decentralized repositories, users in each country can decide which software they want to distribute and how. If someone thinks a local ban is unjust, they know they have the right and the tools to redistribute any app that is in f-droid.org, or other free software repositories. Free software is central to an effective decentralized ecosystem.
  - duped 4y ago
pessimizer 4y ago
> In the Chinese app store market [there are] five to ten commonly used app stores, and yet even the largest has less than a majority market share. Most Chinese people have more than one app store on their phone, so there is no monolith there, whereas “outside of China, Apple and Google control more than 95 percent of the app store market share”. Ecosystems with multiple app sources work, and governments around the world believe that monopoly forces are what keeps Google Play and Apple App Store dominant.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  One could argue that the act of 'curation' happens before the stores even begin to offer anything, because anyone with a sense of self-preservation in a regime that likes heavy political censorship will have an instinct for what is within acceptable bounds. And that is before we get to people on boards that keep hands on the pulse and so on. I guess what I am saying is: "Absolute number of stores does not equal better access to anything." For all my beef with Apple and Android ecosystems, there are ways to bypass most of it ("control over market"). I am not sure, it is an option in China despite having 5 stores as opposed to 2.
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  The interesting counterpoint to this, though, is that China is less concentrated in spots 1-5, but way more concentrated comparing the Top 5 vs. the rest. Among Internet brands, the classic $100bn+ market cap companies of Tencent/Alibaba/Meituan/PDD/JD/Bytedance are followed by Baidu/Kuaishou both around $30bn and then not many other meaningful names. Compare this to the US where Google/Amazon/PayPal/Netflix/Facebook/Booking.com/Airbnb/Uber/Square/eBay/DoorDash/Zoom form a much smoother distribution, probably because the scaling advantages of US app stores.
  - sounds 4y ago
    Serious and thoughtful question here, since this may sound flippant - Could the Apple ecosystem of devices be the factor that enables the distribution of market caps? (Very interesting point, by the way) I wonder if it explains the somewhat odd gap in the middle of the China market cap distribution, since Android absolutely dominates the China market at the tail end and Apple dominates at the high end. Apple conflates their walled garden with the high perceived value of their devices, which I'm intentionally ignoring for the purpose of this question.
Animats 4y ago
I use only F-Droid apps. So I can't use Uber or Lyft. "It looks like F-Droid does not have any apps matching your search string "Lyft" "
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
  I wish Apple or Android were basically forced to expose their app stores as a repo that a package manager can talk to.
  - adrr 4y ago
    Do you think app publishers want that? I don't want my apps on any place but the App Store or Play store and I own the copyright on them which gives me full control of distribution.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
      The App Store app or the App Store backend repository? I'm talking about the backend services being opened up so that it can be utilized by other clients. Apps can be gated behind payment or authorization similar to how RHEL or SLES package managers work.
compiskey 4y ago
themacguffinman 4y ago
> One common complaint about decentralized systems is that they work badly. (...) Ecosystems with multiple app sources work, Emphasis mine. It goes from claiming they don't "work badly" to finally conceding they merely "work", no attempt to demonstrate that they work well. Apparently a great example is Windows, a notorious dumpster fire so filled with unverifiable garbage it spawned a secondary market of antivirus software. Or GNOME software, which I assume they just meant Linux software, where apt/dnf/Flatpak/Snapcraft has definitely not caused user confusion and a million help articles about how to use it and which to use with weird fan rivalries over which ones should take the crown (I'm referring to the animosity around Snap vs alternatives) /s. Or works so well it allows users to accidentally delete their desktop environment [1]. Don't know much about the Chinese app store market, but it's not like any Chinese market could be considered decentralized when the central government has deeper restrictions on apps than any Western app store. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/pop_os/comments/qqa44e/linus_tech_tips_switches_his_personal_pc_to_pop_os/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pop_os/comments/qqa44e/linus_tech_t...
- spookie 4y ago
  Oh come on, you can say a lot of things about Linux, but GNOME's software centre is as user friendly as it gets. You don't even need to worry about which package manager it uses. Pop store is a different story, but that's a very specific thing.
  - themacguffinman 4y ago
    Depends on the distro. Many distros don't integrate perfectly, some require additional configuration/setup around PackageKit, and there are a lot of customer complaints around various basic issues. One common example: the software centre showing "No Application Data Found". Another common issue: updates don't really work, the workaround is to use the underlying package manager to perform updates. GNOME's software centre issues very clearly stem from the diversity of package managers and formats and environments it has to support because Linux actually has a decentralized application ecosystem. On Android, F-Droid likes to claim that the "technical skill" needed to install other packages is an artificial barrier which is just imposed by Google, yet it merely piggybacks off the usability & simplicity of Google's centrally developed package formats (.apk or .appbundle) and package manager (PackageManager). When the ecosystem is actually decentralized, GNOME software shows just how user unfriendly things become.
college_physics 4y ago
it wasn't until rather recently that I discovered that the f-droid model is actually decentralized... the various clients are still rather rudimentary (catering to the converted and knowledgeable) but the potential is obvious. one killer feature that is still nascent (except for a few KDE apps) is to offer complete bundles of compatible open source apps, e.g., with uniform look and feel and, maybe, interoperability. in an open source world there is no reason why the metadata of different projects could not be used more actively to provide a high quality experience.
- yewenjie 4y ago
  There is the Simple Suite of apps which fit the bill - https://www.simplemobiletools.com/ https://www.simplemobiletools.com/.
  - college_physics 4y ago
    thats a good initiative, though I had more in mind something like the different linux desktop distributions. Maybe thats not possible on android or maybe its a matter of time.
wintermutestwin 4y ago
For discovery, I no longer use app stores, music streamers, youtube, amazon, etc. I am stuck with time wasting organic searching. I think there is a huge market for trustworthy curation. Google may have beat out Yahoo, but I think it will cyclically turn back around as all platforms become more and more inundated with junk that drowns out valuable content.
- rightbyte 4y ago
  Try finding a good calculator app by only using Google App store. I dare you! Since you can't filter away ads or "up selling" you have to grind through like 15 shovel ware apps giving up and settling for a crappy one.
  - floren 4y ago
    Ah, simple, I just remember that typing "droid48" will take me to the only calculator app I'll ever need :)
- nicbou 4y ago
  > I think there is a huge market for trustworthy curation There is a huge market for trustworthiness in general. It's getting really hard to get honest advice anywhere these days. It's nothing but sales pitches.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    Untrustworthy money beats out trustworthy. If I've already made a billion being scum it pays for me to buy your trustworthy platform when it is still in the millions stage, then corrupt it and pump as much money out of it as possible based on its good name. We see this on non internet products often. Some popular 'small farm' product gets bought by a megacorp but they don't change their marketing.
- donmcronald 4y ago
  > I think there is a huge market for trustworthy curation. I agree. Give me an indie game store that doesn’t allow in app purchases or ads and I’d abandon the existing stores faster than you can blink.
Mindless2112 4y ago
Is there a popular F-Droid repository that offers ad-free software that isn't necessarily open-source?
- eighthave 4y ago
  https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/ https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Even if I go on to install the app from the Play store, I use f-droid to filter down to non-user hostile apps in oversubscribed categories like soduko apps.
duxup 4y ago
I don't understand what about this decentralized idea that f-droid is selling me ... that I'm supposed to LIKE here? I develop apps, I get the downside of these centralized services for me, but I'm not sure what they're selling me as a user here. They seem to sell me on privacy / censorship concerns, but I see no privacy benefits stated. I don't see any reason distributed stores are more privacy focused. China is their example? If anything that indicates the store itself is less of a potential privacy / censorship issue than other factors. >From the point of the user, the ideal app store would contain exactly what the user wants, and not one thing more. I don't really care if there are more apps on there that I might try and not use. I don't understand what I'm being sold here / why I would like that / how that even could happen.
- eighthave 4y ago
  If you're interested in learning more about what F-Droid offers, I can recommend some more blog posts: * https://f-droid.org/2022/09/30/free-software-and-inspection-are-key-to-software-we-can-trust.html https://f-droid.org/2022/09/30/free-software-and-inspection-... * https://f-droid.org/2022/02/28/no-user-accounts-by-design.html https://f-droid.org/2022/02/28/no-user-accounts-by-design.ht... * https://f-droid.org/2020/01/16/tracking-the-trackers.html https://f-droid.org/2020/01/16/tracking-the-trackers.html * https://f-droid.org/2019/05/05/trust-privacy-and-free-software.html https://f-droid.org/2019/05/05/trust-privacy-and-free-softwa... * https://f-droid.org/2019/04/15/privacy-preserving-analytics.html https://f-droid.org/2019/04/15/privacy-preserving-analytics....
thijser 4y ago
Google is pretending that there's user choice in app stores on Android, but it's very clear that Google Play gets preferred treatment in various ways. I just switched Android phones last week, and the system offered me to copy over everything through plugging a USB C cable into both phones. To my surprise, Google/Android copied over all apps installed through Google Play, and just ignored all F-droid installed apps! Not even a notice or message that not everything could be copied...
- yakak 4y ago
  Huh? AFAICT there's no longer an authorized Android process to replace your phone off of their cloud. You ran an app from one of your phone vendors and they copied whatever they wanted to?
  - thijser 4y ago
    I guess the process was driven by my new phone: Google Pixel 6a. I guess Google's "we'll get you started by copying everything off your old phone" process can do whatever it wants, but it surely didn't explicitly say "we'll only copy Google Play apps" in a way that I noticed.
- Pxtl 4y ago
  Yes. I had the same problem with F-Droid. I also used to use the Humble Store app back when they had one, same problem. A good feature is that the Android OS allows you to whitelist sources of Apps, so once you install a "store" you can grant permission to that store to install apps without completely disabling the OS installer security. That didn't used to be a thing - either the setting was Play Store Only or it wasn't and you could grab APKs from the browser.
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  > To my surprise, Google/Android copied over all apps installed through Google Play, and just ignored all F-droid installed apps! As an Android dev, I suspect it's not actually copying the apps over, but rather looking at what apps you have and redownloading them (and maybe copying over app data/the cache), as there may be some device specific customization in the APK's: https://developer.android.com/guide/app-bundle https://developer.android.com/guide/app-bundle > An Android App Bundle is a publishing format that includes all your app’s compiled code and resources, and defers APK generation and signing to Google Play. > Google Play uses your app bundle to generate and serve optimized APKs for each device configuration, so only the code and resources that are needed for a specific device are downloaded to run your app. You no longer have to build, sign, and manage multiple APKs to optimize support for different devices, and users get smaller, more-optimized downloads.
awinter-py 4y ago
fdroid has a process for takedown requests[1] they have an inclusion policy[2] for apps in their index which requires an OSS license but doesn't say anything about moderation standards, but they do say 'Trademarks must not be infringed, and any other legal requirements must be adhered to'. 1. https://f-droid.org/docs/Take-Down_Requests/ https://f-droid.org/docs/Take-Down_Requests/ 2. https://f-droid.org/docs/Inclusion_Policy/ https://f-droid.org/docs/Inclusion_Policy/
- smbullet 4y ago
  "3rd party repositories Third party repositories are not under our control what so ever. If you think a 3rd party repository is violating your rights you will have to get in contact with their respective operators. Procedures described here apply exclusively to f-droid.org." From your first link.
powera 4y ago
I had F-Droid installed, but removed it because of the lack of useful apps. They call it "curation", I call it a ghost town.
- ignoramous 4y ago
  Harsh, even if true. Keep in mind though, F-Droid is a woefully under-funded effort. I mean, Play Store is funded by a megacorp that brings in $500M/day in revenues.
- Eduard 4y ago
  Which apps were you missing?
- doc_gunthrop 4y ago
  The Simple Mobile Tools suite alone covers most of the useful day-to-day utility needs.
seydor 4y ago
So how do the people who abandoned the web chasing $$$ in app stores feel now? The app stores have become as chaotic as the web, is it better?
naet 4y ago
This article seems at odds with itself if I'm reading it correctly. The augment put forth is partly that an app store / hub not accepting all possible apps is a form of censorship, but simultaneously asserts that that there are too many apps and an app store that doesn't accept all apps is providing a "curation" service that is beneficial to the user. Maybe they are trying to make a delineation between a large scale app store and a small scale app store, but the point doesn't feel well defined or fleshed out. Unsure what was meant by the statement "The freedom to get apps will always be in tension with the things that people want to keep out of their life"... applications being available to install doesn't mean you have to install them. I agree that the iOS App Store and Google Play store enjoy a monopoly over much of the world, but I don't see that China has a less censored market. I understand China to have far greater government censorship over the internet and their applications than most other regions, so having a more even market share over multiple app stores doesn't necessarily improve the censorship issue.
- hnuser123456 4y ago
  "The big default app stores are full of millions of crap apps trying to monetize you, and F-droid only has a few thousand high-quality open source apps created to actually benefit you" might be a little less roundabout, if not too on the nose. The censorship angle makes sense regarding app devs who complain about getting their app removed for unknown "policy violations", and the fact that a would-be malware dev would (hopefully) hesitate before publishing on an open-source repo is a positive type of curation/censorship.
- woojoo666 4y ago
  > The augment put forth is partly that an app store / hub not accepting all possible apps is a form of censorship, I believe they are saying that a _monopolistic_ app store that doesn't accept all apps is a form of censorship. And then the article (along with some comments in this thread) explain how Google Play and Apple App Store are monopolistic
- eighthave 4y ago
  It is not about scale as much as the possibility of getting apps from multiple sources. Each source can set its own curation policies, and each user can choose the sources they want. And for things that people want to keep out of their life, lots of people don't want NSFW images on their phone, but they want easy access to all the apps they want. What is NSFW in one country could be totally fine in another country (e.g. images of people wearing tank tops or swimsuits).
jmull 4y ago
I really think Apple needs to allow alternative stores. I don't have anything against Apple's app store, and I think it's up to them how they want to run it, what they want to include or not, what policies and requirements they want to set, even what payment processor they will accept. But as a user, I want to be able to choose a store that can make different choices... like f-droid, or maybe something completely different. Plus, I think Apple has little to fear. You can have alternative stores on Android devices and it's not killing the Google store. Also: MacOS already allows you to install software from different places. It's not some dystopian malware armageddon.
- lol768 4y ago
  > I really think Apple needs to allow alternative stores. They're not going to have a choice. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_22_6423 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_22_...
  - tcoff91 4y ago
    I wonder if they'll restrict this to EU-only. So perhaps europeans will have more access than the rest of us.
    - aliqot 4y ago
      we need china to oppose centralized app markets, then we're set.
- eftychis 4y ago
  They have lots to fear as they get a 30% cut. One "simply" needs to launch their own app store and save millions, and aggregate other companies on their store. I can think of Epic Games as a first thought, but I am sure the list is lengthy. Edit: P.S. Amazon is the other obvious one.
  - Aicy 4y ago
    There is great risk in migrating your app to an app store that no one yet uses, even if you are amazon
mritun 4y ago
How do you avoid “curation” being either called as or actually being equivalent to “censorship”? At the end, isn’t it one entity vs others’ opinion whether they like you or not?
- rustyminnow 4y ago
  I think the article addresses this pretty well. The answer is even in the title. > If f-droid.org is the one source of software, then our curation would be censorship, since we would be preventing speech. [...] That’s where decentralization comes in. Decentralization means people can choose who they trust in a fine-grained way, not all or nothing. We have put a lot of work into making it easy for anyone to make their own app repos, and those repos can follow any rules that its creators want. Basically, if you curate apps in one location without preventing others from curating/publishing/installing apps to/from other locations (ie decentralization), then it is not censorship
superkuh 4y ago
Stop using smart phones as your primary computer. As radio transmitting devices you will never be allowed to control them. You don't have the license, the telco does. It seems crazy to me that, apparently, you have to have high technology knowledge to install arbitrary software. Isn't that the primary thing you do on a computer? The mega-corporations will not change. It is up to you to change your behavior.
- throwaway14356 4y ago
  what does an app store do?
- chupasaurus 4y ago
  > As radio transmitting devices you will never be allowed to control them. You don't have the license, the telco does. Correction: telco doesn't, only vendors since modems with open firmware are banned in most of the world.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  It’s far far too late for this kind of finger wagging. In developing countries, a smartphone is the only device many people have. You see stories of people learning to code on a $100 android phone and Bluetooth keyboard. This trend will not reverse ever. What can happen is governments can force the companies to open things up. They don’t even have to regulate. They can just dangle the threat of regulation and companies will move first. Apple has been doing a whole lot to open up repairs and the OS. It’s not far enough but it’s moving in the right direction.
  - superkuh 4y ago
    That's exactly what I said. It will not reverse, ever. The only thing you can do is the only thing anyone has ever been able to do: change their own behavior. And that is very easily possible. I am not suggesting that everyone will change. I am suggesting that you, reading this text, chose to change. Or not, but I figure people on HN definitely have the positive liberty to be able to.
- brianpan 4y ago
altitudinous 4y ago
Terrible idea, the reason why Apple is so popular is that the apps are extremely diverse. Being suggested here is an app store with apps curated by computer nerds who think they are diverse but are probably left biased. Terrible. If you want curation, go on to the Apple app store Today, Games and Apps tab pages. For everyone else there is the Search tab. A good balance.
- mid-kid 4y ago
  The point the article makes is that f-droid doesn't restrict you to one curated source. You can add as many as you trust or otherwise need.
at-fates-hands 4y ago
Its interesting to think what the scenario would be had Microsoft Mobile hung in there and continued to build Windows phones and did a better job of courting developers and making it easier to build and port apps to their app store. Would we still be having this discussion about the limitations of only two players in the marketplace? I honestly don't know, but I always thought they had a good thing going and provided a lot of competition to both platforms. The bad thing is then Google and Apple went out of their way to not put any of their apps in the MS app store (youtube was a classic example), essentially cutting them off in order to get rid of the competition. My long term outlook is there will never be a third competitor to either because now they own so much of the apps, it will be easy to starve off any competitor who wants to promote their apps for another platform. They've already proved already their willing and able to do anything to keep their dominance, sans a lawsuit over anti-competitor or monopolistic business practices.
sundarurfriend 4y ago
One of those alternate app repositories for F-Droid is the IzzyOnDroid repo: https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/ https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/ Highly recommended. I'll also recommend people use an app like FoxyDroid instead of the default (barebones, visually unappealing, and feature-stunted) F-Droid app. I install the F-Droid app only for downloading and installing FoxyDroid itself.
hoseja 4y ago
Centrally planned apponomy, what could possibly go wrong.

436 points by nafnlj 4y ago

aaron695 4y ago

vorpalhex 4y ago

Curation != moderation.

CharlesW 4y ago
That's what they're saying, which is ridiculous. "F-Droid gives you selected apps by default without bans or censorship" is positively thrilling cognitive dissonance.
- senko 4y ago
  You conveniently left out a followup sentence: > F-Droid also makes it easy for anyone to publish their own repository, with their own curation rules.
- luckylion 4y ago
  "We're not manipulating history, we're improving it."
- isaacaggrey 4y ago
  I'm biased to appreciate that F-Droid even exists but providing a default list is not cognitive dissonance, and what you've said suggests that you may have missed the author's point. You can connect whatever "collection of apps" source you desire but you're correct that you do get the "F-Droid List" out of the box. It may feel odd to show no apps when initially using F-Droid but, in theory, one improvement may be to have the user explicitly choose a source list and maybe the "F-Droid List" is first in the list among others. Going in that direction would also help expose that particular feature as I wasn't even aware that you could add / change sources for F-Droid, which sounds like if easy enough to add may be an easier avenue to self publish apps than the major app stores.
hinkley 4y ago
Curation becomes moderation when you get too big. It's the reason that anti-trust laws work differently than the rules that apply to mom & pop shops. It's a constant source of friction with quasi-monopolists, whose employees bristle about how they'd feel if they went independent and their own company was held to these standards. Your $10M company doesn't have to do this stuff. Nor your $1B company 9 times out of 10. But if you're FAANG you're goddamned right you have to follow these extra rules. What I'd hope we'd get in this space here is metacuration. Give me a curated list of curators for subject areas. I want a feed that's 30% environmentalism, 20% futurism, and a mix of random stuff I should care about but maybe don't look at too often. I believe this reduces the censorship element by splitting responsibility into more of a chain.
- guntherhermann 4y ago
  > Give me a curated list of curators for subject areas. I would love this. The closest I can think is a manually-curated RSS feed, and https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome
soco 4y ago
Also decentralization is rather contributing to generate those millions of apps - repo A will have a different version of App M than repo B or a fork and anyway similar apps but from different sources and... well good luck.
musk_micropenis 4y ago
Moderation is a part of curation. What is your objection to the term in this case?

guntherhermann 4y ago

I add https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/ https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/ as a repo, it includes logseq (which alternatively you can just download from logseq's github repo)

carewell 4y ago

I have been using Android since Nexus 2 and iPhone since 6s. Never in my life I felt like I have experienced censorship in default app stores. If they are against the monopolized market make a clear argument, preferably consumer-focused. Don’t hide behind “censorship” and abstract ideas that have proven not to scale - such as users should be able to chose who they trust. This shows such an insane disconnect from the reality of the vast majority of consumers that it’s laughable to include it. And as usual, a great example of a censorship free open market - China.

Bilal_io 4y ago
> Never in my life I felt like I have experienced censorship in default app stores. You're thinking of censorship as a consumer that I presume lives in a developed country. Consumers elsewhere can face censorship [0][1]. I hope this can change your perspective a little bit. 0. Apple takes down Quran app in China https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58921230.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58921230.amp 1. Apple Removes New York Times Apps From Its Store in China https://nyti.ms/2hTHtWd https://nyti.ms/2hTHtWd
- carewell 4y ago
  I mean… yes, censorship exists in many countries, including the US. If China forced _Apple_ to abide by their rules I struggle to imagine how an alternative store would avoid that. Biggest Chinese app stores are tightly managed by the state, same as the entirety of their tech market.
  - eighthave 4y ago
    With free software and decentralized repositories, users in each country can decide which software they want to distribute and how. If someone thinks a local ban is unjust, they know they have the right and the tools to redistribute any app that is in f-droid.org, or other free software repositories. Free software is central to an effective decentralized ecosystem.
- duped 4y ago

pessimizer 4y ago

> In the Chinese app store market [there are] five to ten commonly used app stores, and yet even the largest has less than a majority market share. Most Chinese people have more than one app store on their phone, so there is no monolith there, whereas “outside of China, Apple and Google control more than 95 percent of the app store market share”. Ecosystems with multiple app sources work, and governments around the world believe that monopoly forces are what keeps Google Play and Apple App Store dominant.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
One could argue that the act of 'curation' happens before the stores even begin to offer anything, because anyone with a sense of self-preservation in a regime that likes heavy political censorship will have an instinct for what is within acceptable bounds. And that is before we get to people on boards that keep hands on the pulse and so on. I guess what I am saying is: "Absolute number of stores does not equal better access to anything." For all my beef with Apple and Android ecosystems, there are ways to bypass most of it ("control over market"). I am not sure, it is an option in China despite having 5 stores as opposed to 2.
RC_ITR 4y ago
The interesting counterpoint to this, though, is that China is less concentrated in spots 1-5, but way more concentrated comparing the Top 5 vs. the rest. Among Internet brands, the classic $100bn+ market cap companies of Tencent/Alibaba/Meituan/PDD/JD/Bytedance are followed by Baidu/Kuaishou both around $30bn and then not many other meaningful names. Compare this to the US where Google/Amazon/PayPal/Netflix/Facebook/Booking.com/Airbnb/Uber/Square/eBay/DoorDash/Zoom form a much smoother distribution, probably because the scaling advantages of US app stores.
- sounds 4y ago
  Serious and thoughtful question here, since this may sound flippant - Could the Apple ecosystem of devices be the factor that enables the distribution of market caps? (Very interesting point, by the way) I wonder if it explains the somewhat odd gap in the middle of the China market cap distribution, since Android absolutely dominates the China market at the tail end and Apple dominates at the high end. Apple conflates their walled garden with the high perceived value of their devices, which I'm intentionally ignoring for the purpose of this question.

Animats 4y ago

I use only F-Droid apps. So I can't use Uber or Lyft. "It looks like F-Droid does not have any apps matching your search string "Lyft" "

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
I wish Apple or Android were basically forced to expose their app stores as a repo that a package manager can talk to.
- adrr 4y ago
  Do you think app publishers want that? I don't want my apps on any place but the App Store or Play store and I own the copyright on them which gives me full control of distribution.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
    The App Store app or the App Store backend repository? I'm talking about the backend services being opened up so that it can be utilized by other clients. Apps can be gated behind payment or authorization similar to how RHEL or SLES package managers work.

compiskey 4y ago

themacguffinman 4y ago

> One common complaint about decentralized systems is that they work badly. (...) Ecosystems with multiple app sources work, Emphasis mine. It goes from claiming they don't "work badly" to finally conceding they merely "work", no attempt to demonstrate that they work well. Apparently a great example is Windows, a notorious dumpster fire so filled with unverifiable garbage it spawned a secondary market of antivirus software. Or GNOME software, which I assume they just meant Linux software, where apt/dnf/Flatpak/Snapcraft has definitely not caused user confusion and a million help articles about how to use it and which to use with weird fan rivalries over which ones should take the crown (I'm referring to the animosity around Snap vs alternatives) /s. Or works so well it allows users to accidentally delete their desktop environment [1]. Don't know much about the Chinese app store market, but it's not like any Chinese market could be considered decentralized when the central government has deeper restrictions on apps than any Western app store. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/pop_os/comments/qqa44e/linus_tech_tips_switches_his_personal_pc_to_pop_os/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pop_os/comments/qqa44e/linus_tech_t...

spookie 4y ago
Oh come on, you can say a lot of things about Linux, but GNOME's software centre is as user friendly as it gets. You don't even need to worry about which package manager it uses. Pop store is a different story, but that's a very specific thing.
- themacguffinman 4y ago
  Depends on the distro. Many distros don't integrate perfectly, some require additional configuration/setup around PackageKit, and there are a lot of customer complaints around various basic issues. One common example: the software centre showing "No Application Data Found". Another common issue: updates don't really work, the workaround is to use the underlying package manager to perform updates. GNOME's software centre issues very clearly stem from the diversity of package managers and formats and environments it has to support because Linux actually has a decentralized application ecosystem. On Android, F-Droid likes to claim that the "technical skill" needed to install other packages is an artificial barrier which is just imposed by Google, yet it merely piggybacks off the usability & simplicity of Google's centrally developed package formats (.apk or .appbundle) and package manager (PackageManager). When the ecosystem is actually decentralized, GNOME software shows just how user unfriendly things become.

college_physics 4y ago

it wasn't until rather recently that I discovered that the f-droid model is actually decentralized... the various clients are still rather rudimentary (catering to the converted and knowledgeable) but the potential is obvious. one killer feature that is still nascent (except for a few KDE apps) is to offer complete bundles of compatible open source apps, e.g., with uniform look and feel and, maybe, interoperability. in an open source world there is no reason why the metadata of different projects could not be used more actively to provide a high quality experience.

yewenjie 4y ago
There is the Simple Suite of apps which fit the bill - https://www.simplemobiletools.com/ https://www.simplemobiletools.com/.
- college_physics 4y ago
  thats a good initiative, though I had more in mind something like the different linux desktop distributions. Maybe thats not possible on android or maybe its a matter of time.

wintermutestwin 4y ago

For discovery, I no longer use app stores, music streamers, youtube, amazon, etc. I am stuck with time wasting organic searching. I think there is a huge market for trustworthy curation. Google may have beat out Yahoo, but I think it will cyclically turn back around as all platforms become more and more inundated with junk that drowns out valuable content.

rightbyte 4y ago
Try finding a good calculator app by only using Google App store. I dare you! Since you can't filter away ads or "up selling" you have to grind through like 15 shovel ware apps giving up and settling for a crappy one.
- floren 4y ago
  Ah, simple, I just remember that typing "droid48" will take me to the only calculator app I'll ever need :)
nicbou 4y ago
> I think there is a huge market for trustworthy curation There is a huge market for trustworthiness in general. It's getting really hard to get honest advice anywhere these days. It's nothing but sales pitches.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Untrustworthy money beats out trustworthy. If I've already made a billion being scum it pays for me to buy your trustworthy platform when it is still in the millions stage, then corrupt it and pump as much money out of it as possible based on its good name. We see this on non internet products often. Some popular 'small farm' product gets bought by a megacorp but they don't change their marketing.
donmcronald 4y ago
> I think there is a huge market for trustworthy curation. I agree. Give me an indie game store that doesn’t allow in app purchases or ads and I’d abandon the existing stores faster than you can blink.

Mindless2112 4y ago

Is there a popular F-Droid repository that offers ad-free software that isn't necessarily open-source?

eighthave 4y ago
https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/ https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/index/

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

Even if I go on to install the app from the Play store, I use f-droid to filter down to non-user hostile apps in oversubscribed categories like soduko apps.

duxup 4y ago

I don't understand what about this decentralized idea that f-droid is selling me ... that I'm supposed to LIKE here? I develop apps, I get the downside of these centralized services for me, but I'm not sure what they're selling me as a user here. They seem to sell me on privacy / censorship concerns, but I see no privacy benefits stated. I don't see any reason distributed stores are more privacy focused. China is their example? If anything that indicates the store itself is less of a potential privacy / censorship issue than other factors. >From the point of the user, the ideal app store would contain exactly what the user wants, and not one thing more. I don't really care if there are more apps on there that I might try and not use. I don't understand what I'm being sold here / why I would like that / how that even could happen.

eighthave 4y ago
If you're interested in learning more about what F-Droid offers, I can recommend some more blog posts: * https://f-droid.org/2022/09/30/free-software-and-inspection-are-key-to-software-we-can-trust.html https://f-droid.org/2022/09/30/free-software-and-inspection-... * https://f-droid.org/2022/02/28/no-user-accounts-by-design.html https://f-droid.org/2022/02/28/no-user-accounts-by-design.ht... * https://f-droid.org/2020/01/16/tracking-the-trackers.html https://f-droid.org/2020/01/16/tracking-the-trackers.html * https://f-droid.org/2019/05/05/trust-privacy-and-free-software.html https://f-droid.org/2019/05/05/trust-privacy-and-free-softwa... * https://f-droid.org/2019/04/15/privacy-preserving-analytics.html https://f-droid.org/2019/04/15/privacy-preserving-analytics....

thijser 4y ago

Google is pretending that there's user choice in app stores on Android, but it's very clear that Google Play gets preferred treatment in various ways. I just switched Android phones last week, and the system offered me to copy over everything through plugging a USB C cable into both phones. To my surprise, Google/Android copied over all apps installed through Google Play, and just ignored all F-droid installed apps! Not even a notice or message that not everything could be copied...

yakak 4y ago
Huh? AFAICT there's no longer an authorized Android process to replace your phone off of their cloud. You ran an app from one of your phone vendors and they copied whatever they wanted to?
- thijser 4y ago
  I guess the process was driven by my new phone: Google Pixel 6a. I guess Google's "we'll get you started by copying everything off your old phone" process can do whatever it wants, but it surely didn't explicitly say "we'll only copy Google Play apps" in a way that I noticed.
Pxtl 4y ago
Yes. I had the same problem with F-Droid. I also used to use the Humble Store app back when they had one, same problem. A good feature is that the Android OS allows you to whitelist sources of Apps, so once you install a "store" you can grant permission to that store to install apps without completely disabling the OS installer security. That didn't used to be a thing - either the setting was Play Store Only or it wasn't and you could grab APKs from the browser.
TulliusCicero 4y ago
> To my surprise, Google/Android copied over all apps installed through Google Play, and just ignored all F-droid installed apps! As an Android dev, I suspect it's not actually copying the apps over, but rather looking at what apps you have and redownloading them (and maybe copying over app data/the cache), as there may be some device specific customization in the APK's: https://developer.android.com/guide/app-bundle https://developer.android.com/guide/app-bundle > An Android App Bundle is a publishing format that includes all your app’s compiled code and resources, and defers APK generation and signing to Google Play. > Google Play uses your app bundle to generate and serve optimized APKs for each device configuration, so only the code and resources that are needed for a specific device are downloaded to run your app. You no longer have to build, sign, and manage multiple APKs to optimize support for different devices, and users get smaller, more-optimized downloads.

awinter-py 4y ago

fdroid has a process for takedown requests[1] they have an inclusion policy[2] for apps in their index which requires an OSS license but doesn't say anything about moderation standards, but they do say 'Trademarks must not be infringed, and any other legal requirements must be adhered to'. 1. https://f-droid.org/docs/Take-Down_Requests/ https://f-droid.org/docs/Take-Down_Requests/ 2. https://f-droid.org/docs/Inclusion_Policy/ https://f-droid.org/docs/Inclusion_Policy/

smbullet 4y ago
"3rd party repositories Third party repositories are not under our control what so ever. If you think a 3rd party repository is violating your rights you will have to get in contact with their respective operators. Procedures described here apply exclusively to f-droid.org." From your first link.

powera 4y ago

I had F-Droid installed, but removed it because of the lack of useful apps. They call it "curation", I call it a ghost town.

ignoramous 4y ago
Harsh, even if true. Keep in mind though, F-Droid is a woefully under-funded effort. I mean, Play Store is funded by a megacorp that brings in $500M/day in revenues.
Eduard 4y ago
Which apps were you missing?
doc_gunthrop 4y ago
The Simple Mobile Tools suite alone covers most of the useful day-to-day utility needs.

seydor 4y ago

So how do the people who abandoned the web chasing $$$ in app stores feel now? The app stores have become as chaotic as the web, is it better?

naet 4y ago

This article seems at odds with itself if I'm reading it correctly. The augment put forth is partly that an app store / hub not accepting all possible apps is a form of censorship, but simultaneously asserts that that there are too many apps and an app store that doesn't accept all apps is providing a "curation" service that is beneficial to the user. Maybe they are trying to make a delineation between a large scale app store and a small scale app store, but the point doesn't feel well defined or fleshed out. Unsure what was meant by the statement "The freedom to get apps will always be in tension with the things that people want to keep out of their life"... applications being available to install doesn't mean you have to install them. I agree that the iOS App Store and Google Play store enjoy a monopoly over much of the world, but I don't see that China has a less censored market. I understand China to have far greater government censorship over the internet and their applications than most other regions, so having a more even market share over multiple app stores doesn't necessarily improve the censorship issue.

hnuser123456 4y ago
"The big default app stores are full of millions of crap apps trying to monetize you, and F-droid only has a few thousand high-quality open source apps created to actually benefit you" might be a little less roundabout, if not too on the nose. The censorship angle makes sense regarding app devs who complain about getting their app removed for unknown "policy violations", and the fact that a would-be malware dev would (hopefully) hesitate before publishing on an open-source repo is a positive type of curation/censorship.
woojoo666 4y ago
> The augment put forth is partly that an app store / hub not accepting all possible apps is a form of censorship, I believe they are saying that a _monopolistic_ app store that doesn't accept all apps is a form of censorship. And then the article (along with some comments in this thread) explain how Google Play and Apple App Store are monopolistic
eighthave 4y ago
It is not about scale as much as the possibility of getting apps from multiple sources. Each source can set its own curation policies, and each user can choose the sources they want. And for things that people want to keep out of their life, lots of people don't want NSFW images on their phone, but they want easy access to all the apps they want. What is NSFW in one country could be totally fine in another country (e.g. images of people wearing tank tops or swimsuits).

jmull 4y ago

I really think Apple needs to allow alternative stores. I don't have anything against Apple's app store, and I think it's up to them how they want to run it, what they want to include or not, what policies and requirements they want to set, even what payment processor they will accept. But as a user, I want to be able to choose a store that can make different choices... like f-droid, or maybe something completely different. Plus, I think Apple has little to fear. You can have alternative stores on Android devices and it's not killing the Google store. Also: MacOS already allows you to install software from different places. It's not some dystopian malware armageddon.

lol768 4y ago
> I really think Apple needs to allow alternative stores. They're not going to have a choice. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_22_6423 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_22_...
- tcoff91 4y ago
  I wonder if they'll restrict this to EU-only. So perhaps europeans will have more access than the rest of us.
  - aliqot 4y ago
    we need china to oppose centralized app markets, then we're set.
eftychis 4y ago
They have lots to fear as they get a 30% cut. One "simply" needs to launch their own app store and save millions, and aggregate other companies on their store. I can think of Epic Games as a first thought, but I am sure the list is lengthy. Edit: P.S. Amazon is the other obvious one.
- Aicy 4y ago
  There is great risk in migrating your app to an app store that no one yet uses, even if you are amazon

mritun 4y ago

How do you avoid “curation” being either called as or actually being equivalent to “censorship”? At the end, isn’t it one entity vs others’ opinion whether they like you or not?

rustyminnow 4y ago
I think the article addresses this pretty well. The answer is even in the title. > If f-droid.org is the one source of software, then our curation would be censorship, since we would be preventing speech. [...] That’s where decentralization comes in. Decentralization means people can choose who they trust in a fine-grained way, not all or nothing. We have put a lot of work into making it easy for anyone to make their own app repos, and those repos can follow any rules that its creators want. Basically, if you curate apps in one location without preventing others from curating/publishing/installing apps to/from other locations (ie decentralization), then it is not censorship

superkuh 4y ago

Stop using smart phones as your primary computer. As radio transmitting devices you will never be allowed to control them. You don't have the license, the telco does. It seems crazy to me that, apparently, you have to have high technology knowledge to install arbitrary software. Isn't that the primary thing you do on a computer? The mega-corporations will not change. It is up to you to change your behavior.

throwaway14356 4y ago
what does an app store do?
chupasaurus 4y ago
> As radio transmitting devices you will never be allowed to control them. You don't have the license, the telco does. Correction: telco doesn't, only vendors since modems with open firmware are banned in most of the world.
Gigachad 4y ago
It’s far far too late for this kind of finger wagging. In developing countries, a smartphone is the only device many people have. You see stories of people learning to code on a $100 android phone and Bluetooth keyboard. This trend will not reverse ever. What can happen is governments can force the companies to open things up. They don’t even have to regulate. They can just dangle the threat of regulation and companies will move first. Apple has been doing a whole lot to open up repairs and the OS. It’s not far enough but it’s moving in the right direction.
- superkuh 4y ago
  That's exactly what I said. It will not reverse, ever. The only thing you can do is the only thing anyone has ever been able to do: change their own behavior. And that is very easily possible. I am not suggesting that everyone will change. I am suggesting that you, reading this text, chose to change. Or not, but I figure people on HN definitely have the positive liberty to be able to.
brianpan 4y ago

altitudinous 4y ago

Terrible idea, the reason why Apple is so popular is that the apps are extremely diverse. Being suggested here is an app store with apps curated by computer nerds who think they are diverse but are probably left biased. Terrible. If you want curation, go on to the Apple app store Today, Games and Apps tab pages. For everyone else there is the Search tab. A good balance.

mid-kid 4y ago
The point the article makes is that f-droid doesn't restrict you to one curated source. You can add as many as you trust or otherwise need.

at-fates-hands 4y ago

Its interesting to think what the scenario would be had Microsoft Mobile hung in there and continued to build Windows phones and did a better job of courting developers and making it easier to build and port apps to their app store. Would we still be having this discussion about the limitations of only two players in the marketplace? I honestly don't know, but I always thought they had a good thing going and provided a lot of competition to both platforms. The bad thing is then Google and Apple went out of their way to not put any of their apps in the MS app store (youtube was a classic example), essentially cutting them off in order to get rid of the competition. My long term outlook is there will never be a third competitor to either because now they own so much of the apps, it will be easy to starve off any competitor who wants to promote their apps for another platform. They've already proved already their willing and able to do anything to keep their dominance, sans a lawsuit over anti-competitor or monopolistic business practices.

sundarurfriend 4y ago

One of those alternate app repositories for F-Droid is the IzzyOnDroid repo: https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/ https://apt.izzysoft.de/fdroid/ Highly recommended. I'll also recommend people use an app like FoxyDroid instead of the default (barebones, visually unappealing, and feature-stunted) F-Droid app. I install the F-Droid app only for downloading and installing FoxyDroid itself.

hoseja 4y ago

Centrally planned apponomy, what could possibly go wrong.