Couldn't 1 developer just recompile from source for a matching binary?
I find this stuff really confusing no matter how much I learn - didn't F-Droid themselves have to recompile from source to get a correct binary to check if it matched anyway?
Discussion
Yep, F-Droid always recompiles everything in every new release in their catalog. They can download source from GitHub, but they don't allow binary dependencies from GitHub.
It's one of those arbitrary lines that don't make any sense and why I have mostly given up on their centralized catalog.
I seldom find any direct success getting people to organize but will see what I can do. I still currently prefer F-Droid over zapstore / GitHub / other competitors
Obtainium is by far the best for freedom and privacy.
F-droid is only good if you can about open source over anything else. But you give up your freedom to buy into their centralized catalog of apps. Similar to how the Play Store is.
ZapStore is better for app recommendations than both of them. More free than F-droid, but still has some control over who can post new releases and apps into their relays (for now).
The true solution is a P2P nostr git and every OS being like Gentoo where users are encouraged to use no precompiled binary at all
Obtainium effectively just seems like a GitHub wrapper to me at its current stage
F-droid's biggest flaw to me isn't being centralized, it's being late af to see the value of nostr. I don't know if anyone affiliated with f-droid has an active npub or any npub at all
No, the solution is not recompiling. Nothing is gained from that. It's just checking and verifying compilations.
Obtainium can download apps from any publisher. Most apps just to happen to put their apk on GitHub, so that's why it feels like a wrapper.
The main point is that no one can block you from using the latest with Obtainium.
F-droid's compilation happen every 2 weeks or so. They don't seem to have any plans of changing that. They will always be at least 2 weeks late.
A lot is gained from gentoo-style recompiling - for example, it results in copies of source code being everywhere. There's a huge decentralized archive of different versions of software projects out there lost to time because there's no P2P network connecting it all.
I don't see much point to obtainium. If an APK is available for download, it's available for download
There is no need for source codes in every user's machine. All the devs have it and there are multiple places on the internet that have copies of every repo on GitHub. I used Gentoo for 4 years. It's cool for learning but doesn't really add anything to the user. Even developer users like myself.
Obtainium auto-updates apps for you from APK releases. That's a big deal compared to downloading the files individually.
You think it's a big deal to be able to have obtainium auto-update instead of downloading things individually
But you don't think the benefits of distributed code compilation are a big deal
Bruh
Yep. Absolutely.
Auto-updates do signature checking, so there is no way for platforms to get in the way between the author and the user.
Unless the platform just lies about the signature checking. And don't you ever wonder who compiled your compiler? What about the compiler that compiled that compiler?
Veteran TempleOS users know what they're doing because it doesn't hold their hands.
Veteran Windows and Mac users have no idea what they're doing.
The masses today need enough convenience to do what they need to do, but not enough to keep their brains melting.
Gentoo gets a little closer to balance than TempleOS.
Ubuntu gets a little closer to balance than a Windows or Mac PC.
The thesis and antithesis must synthesize