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The [congress of the Chaos Computer Club](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Communication_Congress) usually takes place in person but the pandemic forced it to become a virtual event called RC3. It is visited by many open-source enthusiasts, so it is no wonder that there are people who love F-Droid and FOSS Android apps in general. In 2019, we [already had an F-Droid meeting](https://f-droid.org/2020/01/09/f-droid-at-36c3.html) at the congress. This year, we scheduled a virtual meeting for Dec 30 2021 and [announced it on the F-Droid forum](https://forum.f-droid.org/t/f-droid-meetup-at-the-rc3-congress-2021/16337), as well as on Mastodon and Twitter.
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Pinning for packages: Android dependency management and F-Droid Push Requests
 
One thing that made GNU/Linux distros so popular is that dependency management was built into the operating system. In Debian, all software installed is packaged as a _.deb_, and its all installed from the Debian repositories. Android has always lacked this kind dependency management, and many of us sorely miss it. Android's model is that all dependencies should be included in the app's APK file, while the operating system only provides the most basic APIs. Many apps depend on other apps being installed. Neither Android nor Google Play has a way to represent that.
 
Over the years there have been [various](https://guardianproject.info/2011/06/18/lil-debi-easy-installer-for-debian-on-android/) [experiments](https://sven-ola.commando.de/repo/debian-kit-en.html) in how to implement good dependency management for Android. The most recent dependency management experiment in F-Droid was "[Push Requests](https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient/-/merge_requests/707)". The core idea was to have a per-repo dependency list. For example, since all Guardian Project apps support Tor, it could make sense that using the Guardian Project repo means that Tor would be automatically installed. Based on the past years experience, it has become clear that this is better handled in other ways. Apps can check whether required apps are installed. The app should ask users if they want Tor, then walk them through the install process. When push requests was implemented, there were not ROM projects that were embedding F-Droid. Now its clearly better to include Tor as part of the ROM rather than via push requests. CalyxOS's [Setup Wizard](https://gitlab.com/CalyxOS/platform_packages_apps_SetupWizard) provides a great Android-native user experience for setting up the core dependencies.
 
We are now [removing support](https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient/-/merge_requests/1063) for push requests from the official F-Droid client. It is clear that other approaches fit into Android better, so it is better to remove the small but present security risks related to this feature. The "plumbing" for push requests will remain available in the code base, so that [whitelabeled]({{ site.baseurl }}/docs/Whitelabel_Builds/) forks can still use it. It is still useful for things like fully automated, headless app stores or automatic installs as part of a standard setup.
 
F-Droid Meeting at the RC3 Congress
Incontro di F-Droid al Congresso RC3
The [congress of the Chaos Computer Club](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Communication_Congress) usually takes place in person but the pandemic forced it to become a virtual event called RC3. It is visited by many open-source enthusiasts, so it is no wonder that there are people who love F-Droid and FOSS Android apps in general. In 2019, we [already had an F-Droid meeting](https://f-droid.org/2020/01/09/f-droid-at-36c3.html) at the congress. This year, we scheduled a virtual meeting for Dec 30 2021 and [announced it on the F-Droid forum](https://forum.f-droid.org/t/f-droid-meetup-at-the-rc3-congress-2021/16337), as well as on Mastodon and Twitter.
Il [congresso del Chaos Computer Club](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Communication_Congress) di solito si svolge di persona, ma a causa della pandemia è diventato un evento virtuale chiamato RC3. È visitato da molti appassionati di open-source, quindi non è sorprendente che ci siano persone che amano F-Droid e le app FOSS per Android in generale. Nel 2019, abbiamo già avuto un incontro di F-Droid al congresso. Quest'anno, abbiamo programmato un incontro virtuale per il 30 dicembre 2021 e l'abbiamo annunciato sul forum di F-Droid, su Mastodon e su Twitter. [Qui](https://forum.f-droid.org/t/f-droid-meetup-at-the-rc3-congress-2021/16337) puoi trovare l'annuncio sul forum di F-Droid.
About 10 people -- mostly maintainers of various open-source apps -- joined and talked for nearly 3 hours. There were obviously developers from F-Droid itself ([client app](https://f-droid.org/packages/org.fdroid.fdroid/), [packages](https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata) and [server](https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidserver)) but also from apps like [K-9 Mail](https://f-droid.org/packages/com.fsck.k9/), [AntennaPod](https://f-droid.org/packages/de.danoeh.antennapod/), [Etar](https://f-droid.org/packages/ws.xsoh.etar/), [Event Fahrplan](https://f-droid.org/packages/info.metadude.android.rc3.schedule/) and [Tiny Weather Forecast](https://f-droid.org/packages/de.kaffeemitkoffein.tinyweatherforecastgermany/).
 
Among other smaller topics, we talked about the following:
 
Most open-source apps are developed by volunteers in their free time. In order to spend time on open-source app development as an actual part-time job, developers need a source of income. Only a tiny fraction of developers can actually live off the donations they receive. We discussed everyone's experiences with receiving donations. An important aspect is that recurring (small) donations are a lot more helpful than infrequent (large) donations because it makes it easier to plan. We talked about how it would be possible to ask users for donations without getting annoying. F-Droid already stores donation links in the app metadata and displays them on the client's app details page. The problem with this is that after downloading, the app details page is no longer actively used. We agreed that it would be great to ask for donations on the "updates" tab of the F-Droid client: when an app has been installed for a long time, the client could ask if you want to donate to keep the app development sustainable. The "updates" tab has already been prepared for this kind of messages, but it still needs a developer to implement the last pieces.
 
Many F-Droid users run rather old Android devices. A possible reason is that they care about the environment and do not want to throw away working devices. In order to still support old Android versions, app developers have to invest a significant amount of work. One example is that [supporting HTTPS connections on old Android versions is hard](https://f-droid.org/2020/05/29/android-updates-and-tls-connections.html). HTTPS connections not only affect Browser applications, but also apps like weather forecast apps or podcast players. While it would be possible that each app shipped the necessary code to connect to modern HTTPS servers, that would increase the size of each app by about 4 MB. There have already been ideas on how to only have one app ship the HTTPS code and have it loaded from there into other apps. The main missing point was which app would be trustworthy enough to ship such security critical code. We discussed that including it in the F-Droid client is not a good idea because the app is already rather complex. Given that both devices running Google Services and devices running [microG](https://microg.org/) already have a provider for that code, we decided that we should just write an open-source library that talks to that system component. Therefore, the library would basically be an open-source re-implementation of Google's ProviderInstaller, calling the [same system APIs](https://github.com/microg/GmsCore/blob/cb3592688b098e5a1870006797be665e3b083f3e/play-services-conscrypt-provider-core/src/main/java/com/google/android/gms/common/security/ProviderInstallerImpl.java#L72).
 
Seldom, there are takedown requests for apps on F-Droid, for example because of copyright claims. Often it is then hard to contact the app authors. Some apps use git repositories without an issue tracker and the contact email address is not actively requested when adding a new app to the F-Droid repo. We discussed having a custom field in the apps' metadata that could store a contact email address.
 

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User avatar mceyes

Translation added

  1. F-Droid
  2. Website Posts
  3. Italian
The [congress of the Chaos Computer Club](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Communication_Congress) usually takes place in person but the pandemic forced it to become a virtual event called RC3. It is visited by many open-source enthusiasts, so it is no wonder that there are people who love F-Droid and FOSS Android apps in general. In 2019, we [already had an F-Droid meeting](https://f-droid.org/2020/01/09/f-droid-at-36c3.html) at the congress. This year, we scheduled a virtual meeting for Dec 30 2021 and [announced it on the F-Droid forum](https://forum.f-droid.org/t/f-droid-meetup-at-the-rc3-congress-2021/16337), as well as on Mastodon and Twitter.
Il [congresso del Chaos Computer Club](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Communication_Congress) di solito si svolge di persona, ma a causa della pandemia è diventato un evento virtuale chiamato RC3. È visitato da molti appassionati di open-source, quindi non è sorprendente che ci siano persone che amano F-Droid e le app FOSS per Android in generale. Nel 2019, abbiamo già avuto un incontro di F-Droid al congresso. Quest'anno, abbiamo programmato un incontro virtuale per il 30 dicembre 2021 e l'abbiamo annunciato sul forum di F-Droid, su Mastodon e su Twitter. [Qui](https://forum.f-droid.org/t/f-droid-meetup-at-the-rc3-congress-2021/16337) puoi trovare l'annuncio sul forum di F-Droid.
6 months ago
User avatar None

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  1. F-Droid
  2. Website Posts
  3. Italian
The [congress of the Chaos Computer Club](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Communication_Congress) usually takes place in person but the pandemic forced it to become a virtual event called RC3. It is visited by many open-source enthusiasts, so it is no wonder that there are people who love F-Droid and FOSS Android apps in general. In 2019, we [already had an F-Droid meeting](https://f-droid.org/2020/01/09/f-droid-at-36c3.html) at the congress. This year, we scheduled a virtual meeting for Dec 30 2021 and [announced it on the F-Droid forum](https://forum.f-droid.org/t/f-droid-meetup-at-the-rc3-congress-2021/16337), as well as on Mastodon and Twitter.
 
2 years ago
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