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.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.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.Also, often these repos are poorly maintained, rarely updated and often conflict with Play Store packages because they use identical app ids.All they care about is to be free from "evil proprietary components" which comes at a great cost of security and inescapably privacy.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.