Every desktop computer or mobile device comes with some form of “app store”. There is F-Droid for Android. Debian has “software repositories” at its core. Then there are the really big, proprietary ones: Apple App Store and Google Play. These have millions of apps, while Debian has tens of thousands,...

Inspecting software is essential for understanding what that piece of software is actually doing. And free software means that all users have the guaranteed opportunity to fully inspect the source code they rely on. The cyber-security industry is built on inspecting software to find malware and build up defenses. Malware...

We have been a bit quiet recently on some fronts, like this blog and on merge requests to review. We strive to keep our users informed, and we always appreciate contributions, even when we cannot immediately review them. F-Droid started in 2010, so we have some technical debt and cannot...

The F-Droid website gives you access to various free software applications without the fear of losing your privacy or data; making it available in Indonesian is important for making free software widely used by the people of Indonesia. Thanks to the volunteers who made Indonesian support available for the F-Droid...

F-Droid is always commited to distribute FOSS Android apps. Building free software from source for Android comes with a different set of challenges from GNU/Linux distros like Debian. Android apps are cross-compiled: they are not built on the same OS as they run. On top of that, Android provides only...

Behind the scenes of F-Droid is a giant pile of automation to manage the process of building thousands of apps from source. This means checking out thousands of source repos, checking them all for updates, building and new releases, and securely signing them en masse. All builds are run in...

This blog post was written by Licaon_Kter, one of F-Droid’s contributors. To help support the work of Licaon_Kter and other contributors, please consider donating to F-Droid. We’re looking to raise €1,200 per week so Licaon_Kter can keep contributing full-time. A user I’ve been using free and open source software for...

Ethics has been central to the F-Droid community from the beginning, with a focus on free software, privacy and user control. A key part of F-Droid’s design is the lack of user accounts. There are no user accounts used, ever, in the process of delivering apps to users. This is...