Yes, but I don't know if they care enough to change. They seem to like the power of telling how people should ship their apps. To me that power shouldn't even exist. That's why Obtainium or Zapstore are better models. No central cartel to decide what is and is not acceptable.
Discussion
How would Obtainium or Zapstore ever help users verify apps are built from the right source code?
I don't exactly feel like you're lying anymore, but I still don't see the argument that F-Droid shouldn't have this requirement for the sake of FOSS integrity
That's not the role of a store. That's the role of other users. On zapstore, you can see which other users liked the app. If the fdroid team wants to join, they can simply tag or like the apps they approve. If you trust them, you can follow them and filter by their approvals. If you don't, you can see everything else. The store is just there to allow people to rate apps and it never blocks anything.
Absolutely convincing. I need to rethink what solutions are needed. Thank you for your time