I don't see
1. Where you're getting that free Linux distros don't meet F-Droid's requirements
2. Why it would matter if an entire Linux distro meets these requirements when your app has met them in the past and we're given a specific reason it doesn't anymore
All I am saying is that fdroid requires much more than just "opensource" test. Many things are opensource that will never pass their tests.
For instance, if your app is hosted by GitHub, like the Tor lib one, that alone automatically disqualifies you as opensource. Which is ridiculous because the code is still freesoftware regardless of where it is hosted.
But at the same time, your app is free if it is hosted by Google or one of the other cloud providers. Which doesnt make any sense.
If you mean being available NOWHERE ELSE but GitHub, then F-Droid is correct, because GitHub is private availability, not public availability.
People are obsessed with lies and decentralization right now, so it's hard to get through life without humoring people who would call GitHub source code "publicly available" (and using their wording), but it's not actual truth.
Either way, your app made it through in the past
Tor is hosted in many places, including inside the Tor network itself with onion addresses. But that is irrelevant for fdroid policies.
Our app was there before, but since we added Tor, they removed it. I am not going to remove one of our most important privacy features just to please arbitrary rules of a centralized app store.
Tor is critically threatened. I get that.
FOSS is also critically threatened by people faking it.
The F-Droid people either care about FOSS, or have themselves backed into a corner where they have to pretend to care about FOSS to avoid the uprising of a competitor.
You either care about Tor, or have yourself backed into a corner where you have to pretend to care about it.
I either care about both, or have myself backed into a corner where I have to pretend to care about both
Tor and FOSS cannot be saved without saving each other
If f-droid cared about FOSS they would only verify the compliance to foss itself. And not these other arbitrary rules they have. By adding other stuff to their rules, they are breaking the FOSS community and picking winners that might align with their sponsor.
The where are you getting that Trisquel wouldn't meet their requirements or whatever? You seem to be lying, I don't see a reasoning where this could be true
Trisquel is not completely reproducible. They are working on it, but its far from done yet.
So, even though they are fully open source, they cannot be F-Droid approved.
They should put qualifiers on their statements about being open source, then.
But they also have the argument that people will just compile it themselves if they care, because their product is very niche.
Social media isn't that niche, you can't expect everyone that cares about open source social media apps to realize at first glance the difference between yours and one with a more verifiable pre compiled binary
Is what I'm saying more accurate now or am I still missing something? Sorry about the delayed reply, was driving for a bit
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.
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
