Hey all, was just looking at Firefox’s new terms of service for their binaries (yuck!) and learned about a new app store called Accrescent.

https://accrescent.app/ (currently down for me)

To me it seems like the major difference is that with F-droid you are trusting the F-droid developers to build the binary correctly from the developers’ source, where with Accrescent, you are trusting that the developers’ binary is really built from their source code.

Then there are other side discussions about build reproducibility. How much does that matter? And some developers don’t like the F-droid build system?

Anyway just wondering what you all think about App Stores on Android Systems?

  • pr06lefs@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    Haven’t looked at it in detail. I like F-Droid because the apps seem to be non-predatory OSS that gets the job done. Its not really a ‘store’ though. I think some apps have a paid Play Store release and a free F-Droid release, to make it easy to support the devs if you want.

    Does accrescent support non-free apps?

  • Xanza@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    So, F-Droid isn’t a store. It’s a repository for OSS android applications.

    So in my mind, there is no trustless source. Even with the official app store you’re trusting that Google is doing due diligence when it comes to developers pushing apps to their platform, too. They may have scans and whatnot, but every so often malicious apps make it to their platform and eventually to users. So frankly I would rather trust my own gut, and the OSS community rather than being told by Google “it’s totally safe, trust us!”

    Frankly the only repo that I trust is IzzyOnDroid and even he doesn’t strenuously vet sources. His repo is an aggregate that either he, or other developers can have their repo be pulled to for a wider audience.

    The same author also runs a magisk repository which is great.

  • IllNess@infosec.pubEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    I use F-droid. I don’t check hash keys but having that kind reassurance is definitely better than trusting F-droid blindly.

    I have had issues F-droid uploads before.

    So Accrescent has only a limited number of apps and only installs on Android 10 and up.

    If you want something with less limits, you can use Obtanium with AppVerifier, or APKMirror, which also has the hash keys available.