First of all, F-Droid is not something that is bad. It is very handy, and some of my apps are available there. While I do not think it is the best solution, at least from a developers perspective, I do however think that it has helped the open source community a lot.
That being said, whats the problem with releasing apps?
The typical flow for releasing a app
First of all, I do not have a single clue how it works for iOS. While I develop in React Native and therefore also for iOS, I have no clue how their store works. The only thing I know is that you have to pay around 100€ a year, or else your app is taken down. So worst case about 8000-9000€ or so? Sounds about right. Also, their reviewing flow is hell for every developer, and while recent regulations in the EU has made it a bit better, its still far from great DX.
When we look to Google Play, while yes, they take your personal data, which of course for F-Droid would not happen, it still only costs 25€. Once.
For Google Play, after you create your developer account, there are quite some steps that you need to do before having full production access. That includes things like Google reviewing your app to make sure „it complies with there guidelines“, but also first having a closed beta testing with at least 25 people.
Those 25 people then have to use the app on a daily basis, or else Google will just deny your request with the reason „Your app does not have enough testing data. Make sure to encourage your testers to use the app more frequently.“
For small apps, especially open source ones, this is really hard! Especially because most users you now have probably find your app via the Play Store, and not via GitHub for example.
Why F-Droid still is not the best solution
My main problem with F-Droid is they way one adds a mobile app to the repository. You have to fork the repository and then execute some commands after you have written a config file for it. For building react-native its even harder!
If you are deploying to Google Play, you can basically just upload the bundle file (.aab) right after building it via ./gradlew bundleRelease and thats it!
The solution
There is probably no good and easy solution for this. It would be nice to have the ability / easy of deployment in F-Droid like on Google Play. It would be nice to have a webinterface where one could just login with the GitLab account and then upload .aab files, at least as a alternative. This would in my opinion greatly improve developer experience.
What also would be interesting is to have some kind of tool / maybe even a GitHub Action to be able to publish it directly from the CI!
That all being said, I want to thank izzy for reaching out to me a while ago for adding my OpenDTU app to their repository!
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