Fossdroid.com: Free and open source Android applications

http://fossdroid.com/

by SnaKeZ • 11 years ago

408 73 11 years ago

fossdroid.com

vezzy-fnord• 11 years ago

Any advantages or differences over F-Droid, sans the glossier UI?

SnaKeZ12• 11 years ago

Popularity data, just this...it's a side project :)

tombrossman2• 11 years ago

Why not contribute to F-Droid, rather than 'reinvent the wheel?' https://f-droid.org/contribute/

Your site looks great and I don't mean to take anything away from it, but when I see something like this I think of it as merely an art project, something I might see on Dribbble. I would never download APKs from here for example, but have no problem trusting F-Droid's APKs.

Dosenpfand• 11 years ago

I really like the popular "popular" sections, the one thing that's missing from f-droid. What could be improved:

1. HTTPS, especially for APK downloads

2. Information about the APKs: built/signed by whom

SnaKeZ12• 11 years ago

Thanks for the suggestions :)

higherpurpose• 11 years ago

And if you're going to add signatures please don't make them MD5/SHA1. I don't understand why so many sites still offer those. Is it some default feature of some software stack where developers just "check" a button for signatures and it only supports MD5/SHA1? Otherwise I can't explain it.

justonepost4• 11 years ago

Google has made it so you can't enforce APK signatures via PKI on android os. Gee, I wonder why!

icebraining2• 11 years ago

Sure you can. Android itself just doesn't do it for you, but the F-Droid installer could very well verify the APK before installing it.

vetinari2• 11 years ago

You can use self-signed certificate to sign APKs. Once you publish the signed package, you have to use this same certificate for the package forever.

When updating, the system checks, whether the newer APK is signed by the same certificate and refuses update, if the certificate differs.

It simply does not matter, whether your cert is vetted by CA or not. So using PKI would not make sense there.

The rationale was not forcing the developers to purchase signing certificates in order to publish for the platform. It does not make difference anyway.

pserwylo• 11 years ago

It is worth keeping in mind that the download stats which determine popularity [0, 1] should consumed with care. They represent HTTP requests which hit the server to download a particular apk file. Thus, things such as web crawlers can trigger downloads, which result in incrementing the download count.

Having said this, they definitely seem to be useful as a general rule of thumb about how apps are more popular, _relative to other apps_.

[0] https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/blob/master/stats/total...

[1] https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/blob/master/stats/total...

SnaKeZ12• 11 years ago

Now Fossdroid in on HTTPS

l33tfr4gg3r• 11 years ago

Would be nice to have a 'Suggest an app' feature on the site.

jfaucett• 11 years ago

I absolutely love this! Great job. For anyone looking to figure out how to build android apps and looking for source examples this is awesome. And the interface is much more accessible than f-droid.

My only suggestions would be to make the source and tracker links more prominent and flip newest so its first or consider making separate menu points for each.

Also any link to the fossdroid src, quick google search for fossdroid didn't turn up anything for me.

Ologn• 11 years ago

Some of the best samples are from Google - https://developer.android.com/samples . They are some of the best examples of how to program Android, especially in terms of keeping to best practices and avoiding now-deprecated techniques.

The quality of Fossdroid/Fdroid apps are hit and miss - some are good, some not. I should know, some of my ports to Android are on it ( http://fossdroid.com/a/truly-creative-live-wallpaper.html ) where I'm still very nervous that critical sections survived my port safely.

7ewis• 11 years ago

Thanks for this!

Will try and learn how to make my own apps by reading the source of others.

SnaKeZ12• 11 years ago

we need to thanks https://f-droid.org :)

mahouse• 11 years ago

1. Resize the browser so the hamburger menu is shown,

2. Click it twice,

3. Resize the browser to its original size,

4. The sidebar has vanished forever.

SnaKeZ12• 11 years ago

Thanks, i will fix it :)

spiritplumber• 11 years ago

Nice, how do I add mine? I'd like to keep the sources available on my wiki (mostly because that way I get a download count)

SnaKeZ12• 11 years ago

https://f-droid.org/contribute/

whacker• 11 years ago

Nice Job. How do you accept new entries?

Do you have/plan to build an installer app like the f-droid project? That app itself could use a modern design like you have done :-)

dublinben2• 11 years ago

You submit new apps to F-droid. This is just a front-end to their database.

nextos2• 11 years ago

IMHO a big missing app in FOSS Android is a good offline maps & nav program. Nokia Maps are great, but closed. QT's Marble could fill in this gap, if ported.

phillc733• 11 years ago

I use OsmAnd all the time:

http://fossdroid.com/a/osmand~.html

https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=net.osmand.plus

https://github.com/osmandapp/Osmand

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OsmAnd

The interface took a little while to become used to, but in general I've found it to be an excellent GPS navigation tool.

Maps are downloaded, so everything works offline. I've used it extensively around Europe and especially in Austria.

nextos2• 11 years ago

Thanks, it was a bit buggy last time I tried. Besides, is navigation working well when offline?

darakian• 11 years ago

What rom do you use as a base?

gusmd• 11 years ago

Great site and nice UI. Congratulations.

Issues/sugestions:

1. Couldn't find an option to add my app.

2. Screenshots of apps would be nice (some people might be more interested in the app itself than in the source code).

el_duderino• 11 years ago

Yeah screenshots would be a huge improvement.

dublinben2• 11 years ago

Couldn't find an option to add my app

You can add your app by submitting it to F-Droid. This is just a front end.

digi_owl2• 11 years ago

Something of a tangent, but i really wish it was possible to whitelist specific apps to act as "stores". Right now if i want to use F-Droid or similar i have to either leave my device open for others to also be able to install, or constantly juggle the "unknown sources" option.

Spittie• 11 years ago

You can! You just need to make the F-Droid app a System app, then it can install applications without having to keep the "unknown sources" options on.

You can use this app to do it: https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=de.j4velin.syste...

You can also disable the "install" script and have it install stuff without any prompts like the play store, just go into the settings, scroll to the bottom and enable "Expert" and "Install using system-permission".

digi_owl2• 11 years ago

Everything here implies one has root.

eighthave3• 11 years ago

While we love more people testing the system/priv-app and root support in FDroid, keep in mind it is very very beta and not ready for general use. We did just have the core functionality professionally audited, and have fixed the issues they found.

aceperry• 11 years ago

This is a nice way to feature and popularize open source software. It would be nice to have a way to integrate the repo with each individual app. May the play store should have a section like this.

Lorento• 11 years ago

Half the value in this is that it's not the Play store which is blocked in China and practically inaccessible on a phone without the Play store app pre-installed. And they won't let you install it yourself. You've really got to fight to get access.

libredroid2• 11 years ago

I think some people are confused/missing the point.

This isn't competing with F-Droid, it IS F-Droid. Everything from the statistics to the APK downloads (notice the redirect) are sourced from https://f-droid.org/.

It's a beautiful front end and necessary improvement over what exists, but it's complementary not competitive.

My $0.02:

1. Link to download button to the app entry in F-Droid so I can download it from the Android client. (Getting the user to trust random APKs is not a responsible behavior.)

2. Clarify that this site is a viewer for F-Droid and non-UI contributions should be sent there.

Other misc notes:

Install F-Droid as a system app (root) in order to install packages using the client without having unknown sources checked.

Material design for the client is coming [1]

[1] https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient/merge_requests/64

It's awesome to see this on the front page of HN, If you think these things are worth supporting, do so! https://f-droid.org/contribute

SnaKeZ12• 11 years ago

Yes, isn't competing with F-Droid...it's just a frontend for F-Droid with popularity data.

libredroid2• 11 years ago

Your download links point to the most recent version of the app, which is not always the recommended version available from F-Droid. Recommended versions are marked with a star. For example, http://fossdroid.com/a/fdroid.html serves a download of 0.86 which is an unstable test version. All of this is handled better by the F-Droid client app. The way your site is set up now could lead to a poor user experience if they encounter problems with unstable versions of apps that shouldn't be downloaded by default.

Being open source, you're free to do whatever you like, but I suggest you talk with the F-Droid devs to make sure everything is mutually beneficial.

mkesper• 11 years ago

Please include a short About section telling us so (can link to a longer About page).

Always imagine someone stumbles over your page, not knowing what it's about at all.

kannan4k• 11 years ago

Good to see a list of apps with source code!

patcon• 11 years ago

I am so unbelievably stoked about your efforts, SnaKeZ! Thanks so so so much! Definitely keep conversation open with the f-droid devs!

hayksaakian• 11 years ago

Has anyone figured out how to distribute an android wear app outside of the play store? How would i get it on f-droid?

In development i can load the APK directly to the watch, but how will my users do it? Android Studio packs the wear.apk inside of the mobile.apk but your phone won't upload the wear.apk to your watch unless it comes from google. (at least in my experience.

minusSeven• 11 years ago

From blackberry user perspective which of these apps need google services to work. Would love to have apps that don't depend on google ecosystem.

afandian• 11 years ago

Interesting design philosophy. I'm used to reading vertical lists, e.g. https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?page_id=0&fdcategory=...

Reading a list sideways feels bizarre: http://fossdroid.com/c/system/

Intuitively I feel like my eyes are trained to flick sideways to read a short line and then down. Recalibrating to flicking sideways to read a short line, then moving sideways again a variable distance feels difficult.

eighthave3• 11 years ago

fossdroid.com looks quite nice, a great start. As a big contributor to FDroid, I think it makes sense to run fossdroid.com as a separate project right now so it can develop fast on its own. Then we can figure out how best to integrate it with f-droid.org.

One thing that MUST be addressed before considering it something that people actually use is the total lack of HTTPS. This is not optional, and indeed should be mandatory like with https://f-droid.org and https://play.google.com.

I'd love to see more thinking about the detail view of the app. For example, there should be a "buy/donate" button, since many apps on fdroid have a way to accept donations. You can scrape that from the standard metadata or the `index.xml`. I think it would be best to present it like https://elementary.io does: force the user to click "Buy" with a recommended value, but let them set any value including 0.

SnaKeZ12• 11 years ago

Thanks for the reply: i added HTTPS and donate/license info.

Fossdroid.com: Free and open source Android applications

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