Google can go fuck itself.

Hopefully this will put some jet fuel into the Linux phone development.

I’m checking out Graphene OS next week and pretty pumped about it. This Google ratfucking has been just the push I need to get off Android.

And obviously I haven’t stopped telling people around me haha

You are of course aware that Graphene OS is affected just like any other version of Android?

I don’t see why it would be.

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.