The Future of Accrescent
blog.accrescent.app
Accrescent is a novel Android app store focused on security, privacy, and usability. We’ve been building Accrescent since 2021 to improve the security and freedom of everyday Android users by providing an alternative to Google Play which doesn’t compromise on technical excellence and protecting our users. Aligned with this mission, over 42,000 people worldwide trust Accrescent to deliver their apps safely. Now, we need your help to continue. Accrescent has always been free to use because we believe security shouldn’t have to come at a price. We also understand we’re trusted by our users to secure a sensitive and significant portion of their lives — the apps they use — so we’ve built Accrescent transparently, making our code open source so others can run and inspect it as they please.

Accrescent, for those who don’t know, is an alternative android app store. They aim to compete directly with the play store, so unlike F-Droid they include both FOSS and proprietary apps. They are also very security focused. They’re still small but I find their approach interesting and their ambition worth supporting.

Unfortunately, as with many FOSS projects, funding is a challenge. If you believe they are worth supporting, please read the linked blog post.

Disclaimer: I’m not affiliated with the project in any way, just a fan trying to raise awareness.

    • SorryImLate@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      31·
      18 days ago

      That’s an absolutely valid choice.

      It’s not however the choice that the majority of people make. Weaning them off the play store needs an alternative with proprietary apps.

      • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
        2·
        18 days ago

        I might even be okay with having proprietary apps in it if you had to manually go and enable it and got a warning about the fact that proprietary apps could be dangerous because you don’t know what they’re doing.

        By default, though, it should only show FOSS

        It would be really nice if they let you have third party repositories, again with a disclaimer that it could be dangerous.

        That way, they would not be subject to apt takedown requests because even if they took it down, the app developer could just launch their own onion repo and host it themselves. But instead of giving the user a warning and telling them what could go wrong, they are like, no, we’re going to make the decision for you. Therefore, I have to make the decision not to use them.

        • SorryImLate@piefed.socialOPEnglish
          2·
          18 days ago

          Last I heard, the intention is that users will be able to filter for open-source apps if they want.

          I haven’t seen anything warning against proprietary apps specifically. As a minimum, I would hope that they implement an agreement similar to the play store where the app developers are legally bound by the privacy terms in the app description (re data, advertising, etc.). This statement could maybe include an alternative wording for OS vs Proprietary apps? Definitely something to think about.

          Edit to add: I can’t comment on 3rd party repositories. Too technical for me.

      • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
        0·
        18 days ago

        Fdroid. The government can ask that a app be removed from the main repository, and they would have to comply, but since you have the ability to add third-party repositories, the developer could just launch a Tor onion service and give some simple instructions, and people could continue using it, like nothing ever happened.

        • Ulrich@feddit.orgEnglish
          11·
          18 days ago

          You realize they can just demand for it to be removed from the source repository?

              • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
                1·
                18 days ago

                None of them deliver exclusively over tor. F-Droid has default tor repositories if you want to use them. And third party repositories can be tor repositories.

    • eldavi@lemmy.mlEnglish
      02·
      18 days ago

      tiktok proves that even the google and apple app stores are vulnerable to takedown requests so this is a strange condition to stand on.

      • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
        11·
        18 days ago

        You actually just proved my point better. They are all vulnerable to takedown requests except for fdroid where third party repositories can be used.