this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2025
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I don't see why it would need to be affected.
The constraint to require a valid signing isn't something imposed by the license on the Android code. If you want to distribute a version of Android that doesn't check for a registered signature, that should work fine.
I mean, the Graphene guys could impose that constraint. But they don't have to do so.
I think that there's a larger issue of practicality, though. Stuff like F-Droid works in part because you don't need to install an alternative firmware on your phone
it's not hard to install an alternate app store with the stock firmware. If suddenly using a package from a developer that isn't registered with Google requires installing an alternate firmware, that's going to severely limit the potential userbase for that package.
Even if you can handle installing the alternate firmware, a lot of developers probably just aren't going to bother trying to develop software without being registered.
I don't think most developers who are putting their Open-Source apps on F-Droid have any minimum user threshold.
But if Graphene chooses not to do this, they diverge from the Android project. Which will take more time to maintain the project which will ultimately lead to more developers burning out and dropping out of the project.
It doesn’t need to be affected, but most open source projects don’t have the resources to keep going against big companies when most of their users aren’t contributing.
GrapheneOS wasn't going to be affected anyway and there's nothing for the GrapheneOS developers to change. The developer verification thing will be done by proprietary Google apps. Those apps cannot get the necessary permissions to block app installs or disable apps.
They already diverge by having a network permission and a bunch of other differences, and not being allowed to use Google Pay because of those differences
That might be true, I don’t know much about GrapheneOS. But I do know that users of open source projects expecting changes to come out of thin air, and filing bugs when they don’t, is hurting the volunteers behind open source projects. So we should all make sure to volunteer some of our own time or money to keep the projects we love going, instead of just expecting them to fix the things we dislike.
The aosp has been in the process of being gutted, I surmise in preparation of these anti consumer measures, graphene os has its work cut out for it. I imagine that after the dust settles, consumers will have to pick between an immature Linux os or their personal preference of walled garden.
Graphene could sandbox the integrity check, just like they do with the Play Store.
It becomes an integrity check arms race. Graphene OS devs not keen on this idea, but they may not have a choice in the near future
I would guess that it's probably not much by way of change
theoretically, maybe just a single line patch
to cause this check not to take place.
Theoretically it might be, but it’s another patch you’ll have to maintain