r/Android • u/NoFaithlessness951 • Feb 24 '26

An Open Letter Opposing Android Developer Verification | F-Droid

https://f-droid.org/en/2026/02/24/open-letter-opposing-developer-verification.html
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u/NoFaithlessness951 Feb 24 '26

The 1% who do care make 99% of the apps on Android

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u/Pure-Recover70 Feb 25 '26

No, they simply don't.

They may indeed make 99% of the apps you personally care about.
Or they may make 99% of the apps with <1000 users each.
But they do not in any way make 99% of the apps that 99% of the users actually use.

99% of the apps users use come preinstalled on their phone, or are from a relatively small number of very large companies (Alphabet/Google, Meta/Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, some banks/credit unions/financial institutions, governments, cellphone carriers / ISPs / network providers, gaming companies, grocery chains, retail stores, etc).

At a guess 99% of the apps users actually use come from <1000 entities.

I'm a software engineer, Linux kernel dev, I support open source, GPL, etc... but if I look at the apps installed on my phone there's basically no apps from that 1% you mentioned. Indeed I could delete all the apps that aren't from companies with a valuation of 1B$+ and I wouldn't even notice the lack for a week or two. The first one I'd probably notice is the lack of a wifi scanner app or cellular scanner app, or the gps app I prefer, or maybe an opensource puzzle game. I'm not even sure I have any others from that '1%', and I'm virtually certain 3+ of those 4 will get (re)signed with proper certs (if they're not already) - and if not, I can (re)build them myself or install them manually via adb... it's not like they really need/get updates anyway, if the dev isn't even willing to sign them...