Awesome app. It is somehow not listed on android-foss list so maybe someone didn’t know about it.
Obtainium allows you to install and update Open-Source Apps directly from their releases pages, and receive notifications when new releases are made available.
GitHub page: Link.
The developer of obtainium or the packages we’re installing? I’ll assume the former. If you’re skeptical about obtainium you could still use it as a source to monitor && notify and then do your install manually.
How does f-droid solve this problem? From my understanding they confirm that the .apk
provided by the dev matches what compiles from source and run it through Virus Total. Those are trivial steps for a malicious dev to take to slip in something nefarious.
At that point you’re relying on the community to check every commit for nefarious code $x. Not to mention they could simply build up community trust for some time before slipping in the code, since they’d effectively be burned once (if?) their very first shady code commit is found.
I can’t imagine f-droid would go on the hook and say everything they build is also code reviewed for malicious stuff, right?
They don’t just confirm it, the apk you download from fdroid is compiled by them from the source code. And sure, they’re not reviewing all the source code for all apps they build, but it’s still one added layer of security.