Captain Beyond

I think there are good reasons to be wary of slop that don’t involve animorphing into an MPAA lawyer and parroting screeds about how you shouldn’t download cars or whatever.

If you’re looking for proprietary apps in F-Droid you won’t find them. The inclusion policy of F-Droid only allows free (libre) apps.

It certainly appears to be a release version (“2.0.1”) but in the build metadata the “current version” is still 1.23. That’s probably why the 2.0 builds still appear to be marked as beta (I assume any version past the “current version” is labelled as such).

I assume per the announcement

We are excited to begin rolling out F-Droid 2.0 to users over the coming weeks after 14 test releases.

they still have the 1.23 build marked as “current” for that reason. I think that’s also the build you get when you click “Download F-Droid” on the home page.

For me the most important thing is that something is free software. I’ve seen people advertise proprietary stuff in this community and have reported it, and nothing has been done. I don’t know if that means my reports don’t federate properly or if it’s tacitly approved by the moderators. I know in the degoogle community there are "trusted’ proprietary apps that are often recommended but this should not be the case in a free software or open source community. In any case, any rule that bans “AI slop” while allowing proprietary products is in my mind backwards.

Regarding “AI slop” I am generally in agreement with Codeberg’s policy which states,

You must not share projects that mostly consist of code written by “generative AI”-tools (including services such as Claude, OpenAI Codex).

I suppose “mostly” is up to interpretation but for me this specifically targets vibecoded apps where there is no or very minimal human involvement. This may be heterodoxy but I actually don’t think “an otherwise human-written codebase with a single line of LLM code” is the same thing as an entirely LLM generated codebase. I think there’s room for nuance especially if the usage is disclosed (I don’t think punishing transparency should be encouraged).

Android is NOT Linux.

It very much is, by the most basic technical definition of being an operating system based on the operating system kernel called Linux. I am sorry if this upsets Linux fans but this fact is easily verifiable.

Note that when I say Linux I mean only the kernel, i.e. the thing actually called Linux, and not any of the assortment of operating systems built around it (this includes Android) or any Linux-adjacent projects like GNU, systemd, GNOME, wayland, etc. Any operating system that includes those is a Linux operating system if it’s built on the kernel called Linux, but only the kernel is a prerequisite for being “Linux.”

Regardless it’s not an answer to the problem posed by the OP, which is that “Play Store blocks Aurora Store.” Anyone using Aurora Store is doing so because they require an app from Google Play Store. Whether they are using a “Linux phone” or not is irrelevant at this point because if they are, they are probably using an Android environment to run proprietary Android apps that come from Google Play Store and require Google Play Services.

This is why I say “Linux phones” are for the most part a red herring in the mobile software freedom discussion. A “Linux phone with Waydroid” is just an Android phone with extra steps. It’s not like Wine/Proton which isn’t Windows but an entirely independent implementation of Windows API. It’s literally just running Android in a container. They would be nice to have at the final step of the freedom ladder after you’ve already removed yourself from the google ecosystem, but they are not the first step on the ladder.

A program is free software if it gives its users the four freedoms: the freedom to use, share, modify, and share modified copies. However if it depends on a proprietary library, application, or SaaSS to do its function then I don’t think it meaningfully counts as free software, because it’s unusable without that proprietary component.

I don’t understand exactly why this tool requires a web browser, much less Google Chrome specifically. Surely it could use a browser that exists on the system, or if it needs Chromium specifically it could specify that as a dependency and let the user or the system fulfill that. If it’s downloading and executing some binary from a remote server without informed consent I would consider that malware regardless of whether this app or the app it’s downloading are free or not.

Well at least this one’s FOSS.

Not sure why there’s always a bunch of people rushing to shill for their favorite proprietary trash app in every thread.

I like Ghost Commander

I typically don’t use this style of file manager on desktop but on mobile it just seems to work well for me.

Disregarding the fact that Android phones are Linux phones, a so-called Linux phone will have exactly the same problems as a degoogled AOSP phone will, plus a bunch more

If you depend on proprietary google-dependent android apps then switching to a so-called Linux phone won’t help you because you will still need those apps, and if you’re willing to forego those apps and become “FOSSed up” then there is a vibrant free software ecosystem for AOSP-type operating systems.

As far as I am aware nothing has been “stolen”, merely downloaded. Downloading is not theft; when a file is downloaded from a web server, the original copy remains as-is. If I steal your car you no longer have a car; if I download your car, I have an exact copy of your car and you still have a car.

I do not believe the ideology of “intellectual property” to be ethical, in fact I think it’s directly opposed to software freedom and users’ rights.

Edit: The usual disclaimer, this is not a defense of proprietary “AI” companies, nor an endorsement of “vibe coding” or slop slinging in general.

The main issue in Windows is that it’s proprietary, no amount of patches/mods/wrappers/configuration scripts will change this

IMO “tracker detection” while well intentioned has the potential to backfire, because it can give the appearance of an endorsement of “good” proprietary apps if they don’t have any “trackers” or “dangerous permissions”

The goal of the free software movement for the last ~40 years has been to switch from proprietary to free in order to gain the four freedoms. Trackers and permissions are orthogonal to all that

You can read it. It won’t be Dune, but you can read it.

I did read the house prequels some time ago and they were not unreadable, but still a far cry away from real Dune.

Since you’ve apparently started reading the expanded universe sequels I should just say (trying to avoid spoilers as much as possible) their idea of what was the “final enemy” of Dune is not at all what was suggested in Frank Herbert’s works, and apparently requires reading their Butlerian Jihad prequels (which likewise aren’t anything like how the Jihad was portrayed by in the actual Dune series).

As far as I know the ruling specifically applies to cases where there there is no human involvement whatsoever, since copyright can only be granted to human authored works. If something has an element of human involvement it may be copyrightable even if generative tools were used in its creation.

It’s not some sort of “anti-copyleft” deal where a single generated commit somehow nullifies the copyright of the human-authored parts. It’s kind of a trend among slop-detractors to act like this is the case (that a single piece of generated text somehow turns the entire project into slop) but there’s no legal basis for that I think.

I feel like there’s maybe a handful of these “what if github was an app store” type apps. Personally I don’t see the appeal. F-Droid is the best way to get apps imo, and if it’s not in F-Droid it’s probably on IzzyOnDroid, and if it’s in neither of those they’re publishing releases on their git repo and you can just use Obtainium for those. These “github store” type apps just seem to try to be “Obtainium but easier” but at the cost of centering github as “the store” which considering how hostile github is is not the best idea

But I never saw the appeal of avoiding f-droid just to “cut out the middleman” because then you lose the third-party verification that the apk actually corresponds to the source code and you can meaningfully exercise your four freedoms.

16.7… Rookie number, gotta pump that up

Honestly if I had to deal with degooglers and Linux fanboys as much as he did I’d probably go batshit insane. Kudos to him

Personally, as a free software enthusiast, I feel entitled to the “four freedoms” with every tool I use, no matter how large or small. I have no problem paying for free software and have done so in the past. For me the four freedoms are the point. A proprietary license is either a dealbreaker or a very large downside.

So, for me:

Is source‑available meaningfully different from closed‑source?

No. “Source available” in this context is a type of proprietary license. The fact that source code is visible does not make it not proprietary, because it is shared under a license that favors the interest of the rightsholder above those of its users. I talk about this often when contrasting so-called business and ethical licenses with true FOSS licenses. A true FOSS license grants modification and distribution rights and does not impose usage restrictions, a proprietary license imposes usage restrictions. With a FOSS license I don’t need to worry that whatever I’m using the software for somehow infringes the rightsholder’s personal ethics, and it encourages forking and code reuse.

In other words, thinking about it in terms of whether the source code is open or closed or “available” is missing the point entirely for the free software community. The point is what are you are allowed to do with the software and what restrictions are the rightsholder imposing on your usage of the software. Keep in mind most users are not programmers and thus being able to see source code does not impart any direct advantage to them, but allowing the community (which does include programmers) the four freedoms means things like forks and customizations can be spread.

Do you expect small tools to default to open‑source?

As said above I use free software wherever possible. Thinking about it I guess I generally do expect a small hobbyist tool (as opposed to something that exists to be a product) to be free software, but then again I use platforms that are favored by free software enthusiasts. On Windows I suppose it’s more common to see these as proprietary freeware apps.

Does hosting something on GitHub imply a FOSS expectation?

For me it does not, I’ve learned to always look for a license to make sure, but I think a lot of people do not understand that GitHub can host proprietary projects too.

For someone planning a larger ecosystem later, which model is the most reasonable starting point?

You’ll need to elaborate on this more. If you are planning to grow a free software community then using a true free software license is important. Free software and open source licenses are known to not impose usage restrictions that favor the rightsholder’s interests above the user’s, as I have said. On the other hand, if your goal is to create a business around the project, you need to balance your users rights against your business interests. Starting out with a free software license then switching to a proprietary source available license once you have a captive ecosystem will create resentment and guarantee a community based fork of the last true FOSS version.

The silver lining of “AI” is that it’s a convenient excuse to be anti-user. It’s okay as long as you are “fighting the AI”

I expect to be chugging verification cans in 2027

It is also (as far as I can tell) proprietary