I was lurking on reddit and found out this post, I guess from the owner of @fdroidorg@floss.social .
I really hope that they will find a solution, I think that a lot of people depend on the good state of F-droid
What has happened? Thats a reddit link
Thats a reddit link
that was my source, but anyway I will copy-paste the simplified explanation (the one I understood, btw)
I might be oversimplifying, but here goes.
The Board Community Council reached a decision on something (namely, giving members of the Community Council further direct GitLab access); Hans happens to be the one currently endowed with Owner privileges on GitLab aside from Ciaran; Hans refused to implement the decision, while arguing that the decision hadn’t been clearly taken, that the meeting minutes didn’t specify it, or such technicalities. The Community Council clearly disagreed with that view, and, seeing that they are in theory given the ability to make such decisions, but that in practice, Hans has the technical privileges to block, override, and trump them, they considered it a farce, and resigned from the Community Council, as well as leaving the F-Droid project in its entirety (except for Izzy, who however also resigned and signed the statement I link in the OP, and who is taking an indefinite break).
I guess they didn’t realize, and didn’t like, that their project was being run by a self-appointed leader rather than by the structures that had just been carefully put in place to avoid having unclear leadership.
from the commento of the OP here https://www.reddit.com/r/fossdroid/comments/18aq3x6/comment/kbzu7e9/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
That’s such a shame. From what I can gather, Izzy really cares about FOSS software. This will be a massive loss. But if we’re honest, how can two thirds of the board quit rather than just the one person that’s causing problems?
Well, i would imagine if hes the only one who has administrative access to the gitlab environment, then basicly he can do as he pleases and anyone on the board cant stop him anyway (if they cant remove him from gitlab because they have no administrative rights), so all they can do is quit.
Thats what i think :)
I’m not super familiar with the situation but very familiar with how boards work.
Anyone know why the board resigned instead of pursuing legal action? Unless the gitlab instance was in the admins actual name, it belongs to the org. A restraining order removing the admin would be enough for gitlab proper to remove the guy and install someone else.
While most courts don’t know a lot about technology, board of director actions are very, very straight forward.
Seriously. Thats not okay
This is the actual source that Reddit post links to: https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/issues/447
I don’t understand why people post links to links instead of the actual source.
Because without context, your link cannot be understood by the majority of people using f-droid (or, at least me)
The reddit thread gives the context.
It is the same difference as linking a news article about a new law or the link to the law or something very specific on a government site
Completely agree. I’m not going to dig through the original when I can read a summary
fuck reddit!
https://gitlab.com/fdroid/admin/-/issues/447
Something about someone named Hans always overriding a community boards decisions regarding the future of Fdroid so they are shutting down. I think.
first simple tools and now fdroid? sad times, I hope fdroid can survive this
What happened with simple tools?
yep, they sold out to an advertising comoany
Thats a bit sad. Recently got a job where i can start to donate a bit to projects that helped me as a student :( feel bad for being a bit late
Don’t worry. It would have happened anyways. Plenty of people donated and paid for the apps on the Play Store and he still sold his userbase to a spyware company.
i use that calendar
there’s still a donate link on fDroid. Are we donating to an ad company?
any links for more information?
What’s the story with Simple Tools? Did the maintainer quit or something?
yep, they sold out to an advertising comoany
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I don’t think fdroid will distribute the sold out versions, it happened just a few days maybe a little more or less than a week ago
Sounds like F-Droid is dying because this Hans person is power tripping or having some kind of tantrum
Hopefully this improves the proliferation of Obtanium
Could you elaborate?
Obtainium is an app that allows you to install android applications directly from git, f-droid repos, and apk mirroring sites. Haven’t used it myself yet but I’ve been hearing about it with more frequency recently.
Can it auto-update apps without root access?
Yes this is a new functionality over the last couple months but at least on my phone it auto-updates in the background without issue.
That’s cool just installed it. Thank you!
there is also droid-ify 👉 https://www.f-droid.org/packages/com.looker.droidify/
I will never use anything of the sort. App stores are good
Go on
App stores provide a way to consolidate apps into one place. F-droid is good because its a enclave of free software for android. If I want something like a calculator app I can find one that is libre just by searching.
I also like F-droids policy against anti features like tracking and proprietary blobs. The warnings make choosing free applications very easy.
App stores provide a way to consolidate apps into one place.
It also means that one entity controls everything on that platform. What you’re seeing in this thread is how that often pans out.
That’s why its so important to only use free software. Proprietary software is bad for freedom and strips your control.
F-Droid is not proprietary…
Exactly
This is why organizations need strong bylaws. Without bylaws we are in trouble.
Anyway, does anyone know if there is a way to protest this? This Hans fella may be reasonable. I would also like to hear his prospective.
Also, I would be concerned about two things. The first thing is who controls the finances. In the chaos of it all someone could walk off with a bunch of money. Second off, we should be worried about related organizations like lineage. Lineage os isn’t a nonprofit which means someone could or could have already started doing things like embezzling. Being a nonprofit with bylaws is time consuming but it protects against bad behavior.
is it not possible to fork the project?
f-droid is more than just code, so forking it will have little or no effect
I agree, but it’s the code that is the main bottleneck right now. The F-droid committee can continue as before, but the single admin who has a stranglehold over the repo WO t so over the fork.
is that not right? Am I oversighting this?
why fork fDroid when there’s already decent “alternative” apps and repos?
FOSS ones? Where?
cheers, I thought izzy was a repo, not an app.
F-Droid alternative clients and repositories exist, so as far as I’m aware this shouldn’t really be that big of a problem.
As far as I know, nobody has the reproducible build chain of F-droid.
yes, it can be forked etc, but it’s no easy task
EDIT: this is what I’m talking about https://f-droid.org/it/docs/Reproducible_Builds/
How do other repositories handle this? Do they just use F-Droid to process the apps and then just add the F-Droid version of that app to their repository, or is there another method they use?
F-droid Is multiple things
- An app (client side) that allows users to install apps from many repos
- A repo system (server side) that allows anyone to host apps in multiple versions
- A build system that guarantees that the binary apks are built from the sources
The official f-droid repo hosts only apps built with the f-droid build system. The binaries are signed with the f-droid key and in general are different from the binaries of the same apps that you can find elsewhere, like the GitHub of the apps themseves.
For example IzzyOnDroid repo uses f-droid repo system to host the binaries of many Foss apps as found from each GitHub repo, so not from the f-droid build system.
izzy is one of the board members who resigned
So that would mean that, unless I’m wrong, the closest thing to an alternative for F-Droid that currently exists would be Obtainium. Obtainium is the only other android app that I’m aware of that can install/update apps directly from sources like GitHub.
Like you say Obtanium is able to grab the compiled apks from many different sources, like GitHub release pages and f-droid 1st and 3rd party repos.
F-droid, on the other hand,bgrab the sources from many repos, compiles and signs them, so that all the apks from f-droid repo are guaranteed to be compiled from the relative source, without the addition of anything (tracker, malware…). The same cannot be said (in the sense of technically guaranteed, not in the sense that they are not honest) for the apks you get from GitHub, which are uploaded from the various manteiners.
Edit: in a sense “f-droid build system and repo” and Obtanium are different and complementary:
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fdroid is a repo that gives transparency from source to binary of the apks and contains a certain subset of Foss apps
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Obtanium is a system that aims at giving the greatest amount of apps, without looking too much at where that come from
Yeah, that’s why I said that Obtainium was “the closest thing to an alternative for F-Droid”. If F-Droid goes down because of the current state of things, it would impact all of the other clients and repos. Meaning that Obtainium, while it does work completely differently and it’s not perfect, would be the closest thing to an alternative for F-Droid until someone else makes a real F-Droid alternative. Once again, I will state that I could be wrong, I don’t have perfect knowledge of the internet and therefor, wouldn’t know if someone has already made a more direct alternative to F-Droid that no one has probably even heard of.
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I hope the devs find good projects in the future. I use fdroidomn my phone, but now I might have to rethink it
There will be GrapheneOS malicious actors and “security” clowns that will try to shit on F-Droid. Condemn them, boycott them, ignore them as much as you can. All they desire is to control the FOSS scene and/or to evangelise Big Tech corporate app stores.
We can think of solving FOSS community problems without their existence.
There’s no mention of GrapheneOS here. It seems you have a weird fixation on them.
There is a particular F-Droid critiquing “blog” from their camp that goes by the name Wonderfall.dev iirc. Privsec.dev advocates similar garbage and is also from their camp.
I speak from 5 years of experience and documentation of privacy/FOSS community and know the guts of it, with none to rival my perseverance in cleaning the privacy community’s gutters.
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