誠如我們早在九月時撰文〈F-Droid 與 Google 頒佈之開發者註冊令〉，Google 計劃強制實施開發者驗證，作為構建與發行 Android 應用程式之必要條件，無遠弗屆覆蓋全世界。Android 目前這一開放平臺，任何人皆可在這地自由開發並發行應用程式，即將成為重門深鎖的樓閣，要求世界各地的開發者都必須與 Google 集中註冊，方得以發行其軟體。無論您的軟體乃以商業性質發行到競爭對手的應用程式商店，例如 Samsung Galaxy Store，還是透過非商業性質的社群應用程式軟體庫，例如 F-Droid，乃至在網頁上提供您的軟體予直接下載，一概受此例所限。在上述所有情況下，在一臺 Android 認證裝置上 (即涵蓋中國以外所有 Android 相容裝置逾 95%) 安裝或啟動任何應用程式時，統統都將一律回報並請示 Google 以驗證該開發者以及該應用程式是否已經核准。 經過初回一輪公眾抨擊後，Google 急遽保證一眾開發者「側載並非遠去」。此一番話，正如我們撰文〈言側載時，孰與執言〉指出，簡明是不實。 側載 ，其不敢恭維、意有所指一詞，即在您擁有的裝置上不經仲介、直接安裝按您所選的軟體，著實一去不返，一旦他們的威脅得逞。再者，日後應用程式商店競爭者，不論商業還是非牟利性質，都將永遠處於劣勢，皆因其開發者都必須與 Google 註冊、受掣於其 (恆河沙數、不容商議、不時變更) 的條款及細則、繳付費用、上載政府簽發之身份證明文件，並為其每一應用程式逐一與 Google 註冊。 但不是說 Google 在開發者驗證上退讓了嗎？ 十一月時，眾人感到鬆一口氣，當 Google 在一則部落格帖文依稀給予口惠，說他們將會設計某種「進階流程」，或許批准「有經驗的使用者接受安裝非驗證之軟體的風險」。有評論直言旗開得勝，並宣稱 Google 已在此計劃上全然敗退。然而勝利之說卻是言之過早、痴心枉種。我們自此得悉，在九月份鎖關之前，都將不會有甚麼「進階流程」出爐。他們當時宣稱「正就此特色功能之設計蒐集早期意見反饋」，此點同樣不實：並沒有甚麼意見反饋，談得上有從 Google 以外的任何人收集到。 Google 之官方、明確的立場如舊，按其開發者首頁明言： 2026 年 9 月起，所有應用程式都必須由通過驗證的開發人員註冊，才能安裝在 Android...

This Week in F-Droid TWIF curated on Friday, 20 Feb 2026, Week 8 F-Droid core During our talks with F-Droid users at FOSDEM26 we were baffled to learn most were relieved that Google has canceled their plans to lock-down Android. Why baffled? Because no such thing actually happened, the plans...

This Week in F-Droid TWIF curated on Monday, 09 Feb 2026, Week 7 F-Droid core On 31 January & 1 February 2026 in Brussels, Belgium, part of the F-Droid Team and Board were at FOSDEM 2026. We had a booth to present our project but also had flyers, stickers, camera...

This Week in F-Droid TWIF curated on Thursday, 29 Jan 2026, Week 5 F-Droid core F-Droid Basic was updated to 2.0-alpha1 fixing little things: Show issue for apps we had installed with different signer Manual repo update icon now is ‘Sync’ Fix some changelog logic, pick better Don’t show issues...

Over the past year, we have been busy to modernize our app. The work supported by the NGI Mobifree has progressed nicely and we are now at a point where we are releasing the first alpha version and ask the community for feedback and testing. Note that for now this...

This Week in F-Droid TWIF curated on Friday, 23 Jan 2026, Week 4 F-Droid core Back in March 2024 we announced our switch to Debian version 12 (named Bookworm) and today we are announcing our upgrade to version 13 nicknamed Debian Trixie. We have been testing this internally for months...

2025 was a big year for F-Droid. Not only did we celebrate 15 years of securely distributing FOSS apps to users around the world, we onboarded new maintainers, board members and project collaborators, invested in infrastructure upgrades, and played an active role in independent app store and FOSS developer advocacy....

This Week in F-Droid TWIF curated on Thursday, 15 Jan 2026, Week 3 F-Droid core The F-Droid website has not been refreshed since January 5th due to some infrastructure issues, hence new apps and new updates were delayed to be listed. If you can read this it means we fixed...