F-Droid is an

app store An App Store (or app marketplace) is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not include the running of the c ...

and software repository for Android, serving a similar function to the

Google Play Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store and formerly the Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certified devices running on the Android operating sy ...

store. The main repository, hosted by the project, contains only free and open source apps. Applications can be browsed, downloaded and installed from the F-Droid website or client app without the need to register for an account. "Anti-Features" such as advertising, user tracking, or dependence on non-free software are flagged in app descriptions. The website also offers the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the ...

of applications it hosts, as well as the software running the F-Droid server, allowing anyone to set up their own app repository.

History

F-Droid was founded by

Ciaran Gultnieks Ciaran Eugene Gultnieks (born 1970) is a British computer game programmer, whose projects include '' Star Wars'' (1988, for home computers), ''Dogfight'' (1993), '' Slipstream 5000'' (1995) and '' Hardwar'' (1998) for the PC. He is the founder ...

in 2010. The client was forked from

Aptoide Aptoide is an online marketplace for mobile applications which runs on the Android operating system. In Aptoide, unlike the Android-default Play Store, there is not a unique and centralized store; instead, each user manages their own store. The s ...

's source code. The project was initially run by the English nonprofit F-Droid Limited. As of 2021, F-Droid Limited was no longer used for donations, and was being shut down, according to spokesman Hans-Cristoph Steiner. In a 2014 interview for

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed under copyleft ( ...

, Gultnieks said he was inspired to launch F-Droid because of "lock-down, lock-in and general nefarious behavior from software" on phones. From 2010 to 2015 F-Droid used AGPL licensed

Gitorious Gitorious was a free and open source web application for hosting collaborative free and open-source software development projects using Git revision control. Although it was freely available to be downloaded and installed, it was written primari ...

repository system for development. In 2015 it transitioned to

proprietary {{Short pages monitor

External links

* {{Software digital distribution platforms Free and open-source Android software Free package management systems Internet services supporting OpenID Mobile software distribution platforms Software using the GPL license

History

Further reading

External links