I’m aware that this request has been made previously on this forum and on Github (#6108).
From that post, ByteHamster mentions a lack of interest due to the seemingly small community of privacy and security focused individuals:
“Well, I guess the like 3 people who want to use neither Google Play nor F-Droid simply have to deal with updating themselves :)”
But this could not be further from the truth.
PrivacyGuides is a popular resource that does not recommend the use of F-Droid:
+200,000 Reddit subscribers when it was formerly PrivacyTools. 2nd largest privacy community.
+60,000 Reddit subscribers after it became PrivacyGuides. 3rd largest privacy community.
+13,000 Lemmy subscribers. #1 largest privacy community.
+1,100 Discourse members. Nearly equivalent to AntennaPod (1,200).
+1,700 Matrix members
GrapheneOS is a privacy and security enhanced Android OS and its users (which includes Edward Snowden) have widely referred to this article highlighting the issues with F-Droid:
My point is that while it would require some additional effort on the part of maintainers, it would be well received due to the sheer size of the privacy and security community. Thank you for considering.
Ok, point proven that there’s an interest in what PrivacyGuide has to say and the PrivSec community. However, it’s not the only argument for not offering AntennaPod through another channel.
Extra maintenance work, security issues with trusting GitHub, people not likely to get important app updates (and us, thus, extra support requests) even though as @Matth78 mentioned there’s now a solution for that – these all add to the mix as well.
I’m sorry to say that it remains a ‘no’ for the time being for apks on GitHub. There’s also other methods of distribution which don’t share the (theoretical) security issues of F-Droid, which we’re following. If there’s any news in the area, we’ll of course share them.
Honestly I believe most of the problems with F-Droid is nothing actually serious. If it was, the privacy community in general would have donde some actual moves to improve it, but the truth is nobody is too concerned.
And the worst problems which is focusing on older android versions is easily fixed by using the Droid-ify client.
Honestly, not a big deal at all, just use F-Droid via Droid-ify and call it a day