F-Droid – alternative to Google Play store
Although I'd like to applaud any alternative to Google Play the approach F-Droid pursues does not fit a serious security model. F-Droid builds are custom signed and can be made by random parties without proper auditing after initial review.<p>Also, it is stuck on old APIs and won't allow the use of Android's new unattended update feature (UPDATE_PACKAGES_WITHOUT_USER_ACTION) and requires intrusive privileged system access to do that.<p>A more serious flaw opposing the Android security model is the fact that an app store is supposed to feed from a single repository which F-Droid does not adhere to.<p>Also, often these repos are poorly maintained, rarely updated and often conflict with Play Store packages because they use identical app ids.<p>All they care about is to be free from "evil proprietary components" which comes at a great cost of security and inescapably privacy.<p>It's just not a good choice for these and additional reasons such as building a ton of their apps unattendedly on a potentially malicious server.