dma

4 posts with the tag “dma”

Fear and Loathing in the App Stores

2026/02/06 - 16 min read - 3255 words

I presented a talk on the FOSDEM main track in Brussels last weekend titled “Fear and Loathing in the App Stores” (abstract ↗). It was amazing to see so much interest in the topic, and I had a lot of great conversations afterwards with folk who shared the alarm at the lack of choices, competition, and freedom.

Following is my draft of the talk. My speaker notes weren’t working, so the talk as presented was somewhat more extemporaneous that I had planned, but it mostly followed along the same points as the draft.

Introduction

Hello everyone. I’m here today to talk about mobile devices, app stores, and software freedom.

The majority of humans carry around a little computer in their pocket. These devices are pretty magical: they are packed with high-tech cameras and microphones and sensors and networking and communication hardware.

They also store nearly every personal detail about you: who you are, who your friends and family are, where you are, where you are going, and your favorite books and music and movies and web sites.

But do you own this computer? Truly own it? Can you do whatever you want with it? Is it actually yours, or do you merely possess it?

History

The purpose of a computer is to run software. All that fancy equipment is useless unless there is software that is driving it and telling it what to do.

How does software get on a computer? When I first started programming in 1982 on my TRS-80, I subscribed to a magazine called “The Rainbow”¹ that would publish pages of source code that I would tediously transcribe into the computer’s BASIC interpreter — mostly games and graphics demos and things like that. Later on, I got a cassette peripheral that would allow loading programs from magnetic tape. Then onto floppy disks, and so on.

Nowadays, software distribution through physical media is completely gone. It is almost inconceivable that software would be obtained through any means other than downloading it from the internet. The advent of the modern smartphone also coincided with the advent of “app stores” that collect and bundle catalogs of downloadable programs.

What is an app store? It is essentially just an app that can download and install other apps. It also has other useful features, like the ability to browse and search for applications, to read and post reviews, and to update to new versions of the app. But ultimately, an app store is just an app that installs apps.

So far I’ve just been telling you things you probably already know.

A Tale of Two Platforms: the Duopoly

The state of the world in 2026 is that nearly every one of these pocket computers runs one of two operating systems: Apple’s iOS, which powers their iPhone and iPad devices, or Google’s Android, which powers their own line of Pixel devices, as well as a myriad other devices from other manufactures that either license Android Certification or that build on top of the foundational Android Open-Source project (AOSP).

Android is installed on around 75% of all smartphones worldwide, with iOS taking up the remainder; this ratio varies greatly on a per-country basis, with the iPhone being more widely-used in richer countries due it is higher price. But regardless, these two companies form a global duopoly, controlling the operating systems that are installed on over 95% of all smartphones worldwide outside of China.

Apple

The first “app store” for this modern generation of smartphones was called Cydia, and was developed by Jay Freeman — also known as “saurik” — in 2008.² It was a thriving marketplace with thousands of apps and millions of users.

Apple then released iOS 2.0 that contained their own bundled App Store app and suddenly claimed the exclusive right of software distribution on their phones. As the same time, they banished Cydia by locking down the operating system to break the mechanism that Cydia had been using to install software. Cydia managed to limp along for a few more years by finding workarounds to get their software installed, but ultimately when your operating system vendor is determined to crush you, you will likely always lose.

From then on, and until very recently, the Apple App Store has been the one and only app store on iPhones and other iOS devices.

Google

As for the other half of the duopoly, Google’s Android has historically been more open. Android has long provided APIs for developers to build their own “app store”, and many have done exactly that over the years. These stores might be commercial, like the Amazon Appstore and Samsung Galaxy Store, or they might be non-commercial, like F-Droid.

But despite the ability to have additional app stores, it was never a level playing fields: the terms of Android Certification and its related contracts required that the Google Play store be the one and only app store that is pre-installed and prominently positioned on Android devices.

Apple + Google

Despite supposedly being competitors in the smartphone space, Apple and Google’s actual marketplace policies are startlingly similar. They both require developers to register with their respective portals, pay a fee, agree to lengthy, nonnegotiable, and ever-changing terms and conditions, and then submit themselves to an opaque and indeterminate “app review” process whenever they upload a new app or submit an update to an existing app.

Developers willing to undergo all of this get the benefit of reaching the billions of users served by these marketplaces, but at the cost of a 30% fee skimmed from the top of any and all digital transactions that take place through the app.

These enormous fees have resulted in some of the most profitable business divisions on the history of technology. Google’s play store department has around 70% profit margin, and Apple’s app store is almost 80%. These margins are extraordinary and unprecedented.

Why We Fight

So what’s the actual problem? Sure, we don’t have any real competition, and sure we have to live under the yoke of capricious and authoritarian tech overlords, but what actual harm is being done here?

In the free software community, we often think of free software as an end that is self-justifying. We love free software because of course we do. But why does the world need free software? Why does the world need open source?

Free software provides a very real and tangible defense against some of the harms that are actively being perpetrated against millions of smartphone users on a daily basis.

A Silent Hazard: Normalized Malware

The exorbitant digital taxes I mentioned have led to commercial app developers eschewing the practice of selling their apps directly, and instead resorting to shady tactics to extract monetization from users through other means. One common avenue for this is ad-tech: making money by displaying advertisements to users.

This by itself can be quite profitable, since unlike the web, it is all but impossible to block ads in native applications. And on top of this, the ad-tech that is utilized by these apps is invariably communicating with data brokers, surreptitiously and non-consensually building a profile on users based on every piece of information they can get their hands on.

And that can be a lot of data: depending on what permissions an app can plausibly request, an app might have access to your location, your contacts, your calendar, your photos, and much more. All this data can be siphoned off without your knowledge or consent, and goes towards assembling a profile of you for targeted advertisement, for tracking, and for surveillance, and retained indefinitely, for who knows what future purpose, years or decades down the road. All without your consent or knowledge.

This is malware in its purest form, but these apps are not only accepted, but oftentimes promoted, by the first-party app stores.

A Solution: Free Software

If we could see inside these apps, we could tell what they were doing any how they are doing it, then we would be able to identify which apps are respecting our rights and which are clandestinely stealing our intimate personal information.

But apps distributed to the app stores are not distributed with their source code, but rather are compiled down into opaque binary blobs whose code is obfuscated or encrypted. Laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the United States — and the various equivalents subsequently passed in most aligned countries — make it a felony to try to break open these apps to study and reveal their inner workings.

So, free software to the rescue, right? Once could just avoid these hazards by having a personal policy of only ever installing free and open-source software on their devices. It might be tedious to have to cross reference every app you want to install from the Goole Play Store or Apple App Store with some externally curated list of open-source apps, but would be possible, right?

Except, even in cases where you have winnowed a list of potential apps down to only contain ones that are free and open source, how do you actually validate this list? After all, you are just getting an obfuscated or encrypted blob from the app stores. Who is to say that the source code that the creator claimed corresponded to your app is actually complete, and hasn’t had certain malicious bits of it stripped out of it in order to pass scrutiny?

Enter F-Droid: Trust, but verify

For 15 years, there has been an app store for Android called F-Droid ↗. As I mentioned previously, there are many app stores on Android, but F-Droid is special: it not only has a policy of including only free and open-source applications, it also has the means to prove it.

When an app is submitted for including in the F-Droid catalog, it is built from the source code, either by the F-Droid servers themselves, or by verifying the reproducibility of a pre-built binary that the developer submits. Reproducibility means that anyone — not just F-Droid — is able to take the source code, build it themselves, and verify, byte-for-byte, that the compiled artifact matches the app that you are installing on your device. In this way, users can have real trust in the applications they choose to let into their lives.

A New Hope for iOS: the Digital Markets Act

F-Droid is great, but it only helps the Android half of the market. iPhone users were still stuck with the “trust-me-bro” security that they have become accustomed to in that App Store exclusive environment. At least, that was until the advent of the EU’s Digital Markets Act, which was proposed in 2020, passed in 2022, and went into enforcement in March of 2024.³

One of the requirements of the DMA was that the “digital gatekeepers” of “online intermediation services” — i.e., Apple and Google with their app stores — be required to open them up to competition and interoperability. For Apple, this meant that for the first time since the demise of Cydia, they would have to permit additional app stores onto their devices.

So the outlook was rosy. We could finally have complete control of the software we let into our lives, regardless of which ecosystem we find ourselves in?

The Empire Strikes Back: the gatekeepers’ counter-assault on software freedom

Unfortunately, Apple wound up implementing a twisted misinterpretation of the rules. Their claimed compliance was to establish a program they called “Alternative App Marketplaces”,⁴ but they were in no way independent. The marketplaces would need to apply to Apple to be vetted and approved, provide 1 million euros in the form of a letter of credit, and agree to onerous junk fees and persistent oversight.

For developers, they would continue to have to apply to the Apple developer program, pay an annual $100 developer fee, agree to the same nonnegotiable terms and conditions as if they were distributing on Apple’s App Store, and continue to submit their apps and updates though the Apple App Review process, even to get them distributed through the alternative app marketplace of their choosing. It is in no way, shape, or form complying with either the spirit or letter of the DMA, and they’ve gotten away with it without any regulatory repercussions.

Despite all these hurdles and barriers, some new marketplaces have managed to emerge. AltStore ↗ is one of them, and its catalog is growing to include new and novel applications that never would have seen the light of day on the Apple App Store.

However, it continues to be impossible to distribute trustworthy and reproducibly built open-source applications through the alternative app marketplace scheme, because when a developer submits their app to Apple and waits for the manual app review process — or “notarization” as they term it — the end result is that the approved app will be wrapped in an encrypted package and signed by Apple themselves, and only then is the bundle passed off to the Alternative App Marketplace for subsequent distribution through to the end user.

Neither the user, not the app marketplace itself, is ever permitted to see inside this encrypted bundle. Not only does this make it impossible for the user to trust and verify the contents of an app that claims to be free and open source, it also makes it impossible for the app marketplace itself to comply with one of Apple’s core requirements for alternative distribution, which is that the marketplace vouch that all apps they distribute are completely free of malware. But this is an impossible requirement, because they forbid the marketplace from examining the apps themselves.

Google: I have altered the deal (pray I don’t alter it further)

But at least we still have Android and alternatives like F-Droid, right?

Well, not to be out Darth-Vadered by Apple, Google last year announced out of the blue that it was no longer going to be possible to independently distribute applications without registering centrally with Google.⁵ Starting this year, they say that developers will be required to create an account with Google, verify their identity, pay a fee, agree to terms and conditions, and register each and every one of their applications centrally with Google. Failure to do so will result in Android Certified devices refusing to install the app at all.

This is an existential threat to software freedom in general, but also to F-Droid specifically.⁶ We cannot require that developers register with Google, and many will not. If this policy gets implemented, the world will be deprived of some of the most trustworthy and privacy-respecting applications every created.

So instead of inching forward, we are suddenly lurching backwards.

Consolidating Power

As the big tech duopoly increasingly tightens their stranglehold over mobile software, we need to be acutely aware of what is at stake with an app store monoculture. This centralization by unaccountable actors has real global consequences.

And this isn’t just about the prevalence bad software. This is also about what software isn’t available. It is about what is banned, blocked, or never approved in the first place.

Your right to protest (Hong Kong 2019), to hold free and fair elections (Russia 2021), and to protect yourself from police brutality (US 2025) is directly jeopardized by the centralized kill switches these companies hold, and their willingness to use it when extra-legal pressure is applied by powerful actors. This couldn’t happen in an open and competitive marketplace.

How We Fight: Make your voice heard

The prospects for any meaningful regulation happening on my own home country over the next few years are next to zero. As you have probably already guessed, I’m from the United States.

However, since I’m speaking to a predominantly European crowd, you have the fortune of still having strong regulatory bodies and policymakers that are receptive to the needs of their citizens. Reach out to them. Visit https://keepandroidopen.org ↗ to find out who you can contact and the best way to go about it.

And on an individual level, if you are a developer: create free software and distribute it first through the alternative stores: through F-Droid for Android and through AltStore for iOS. You can always distribute it additionally through the first-party app stores afterwards, but the best way to show your support for the alternatives is to make them no longer be “alternatives”, and it is only with your high-quality software they they can thrive and expand.

And even if you are not a developer, you should still be using these stores. Download and install F-Droid ↗ on your Android phone, or AltStore ↗ on your iPhone. They cost nothing, and the mere act of having these present on your device helps chip away at the self-perceived indomitability of the tech giants.

And who knows, before too long, they may become your primary — or only — source of applications.

Thank you for your time, and enjoy the resort of FOSDEM!

Footnotes

The Rainbow was a monthly magazine dedicated to the TRS-80 Color Computer, a home computer made by Tandy Corporation. Sources: Wikipedia — The Rainbow (Magazine) ↗, Archive.org — Rainbow Issue 111 ↗ ↩
Cydia was first released by Jay Freeman (saurik) on February 28, 2008, for iPhone OS 1.1.x, providing jailbroken iPhone users with an alternative app store before Apple’s official App Store launched later that year. Sources: Wikipedia - Cydia ↗, Wikipedia - Jay Freeman ↗, iDownloadBlog - Cydia Store Shutdown FAQ ↗ ↩
The Digital Markets Act (DMA) was proposed by the European Commission in December 2020, formally adopted by the European Parliament on July 5, 2022, signed into law on September 14, 2022, and came into force on November 1, 2022. The regulation started applying on May 2, 2023, with gatekeepers designated on September 6, 2023. Full compliance became mandatory on March 6-7, 2024. Sources: Wikipedia - Digital Markets Act ↗, European Commission - Digital Markets Act ↗, TechPolicy.Press - DMA Roundup March 2024 ↗ ↩
Apple announced changes to iOS, Safari, and the App Store in the European Union on January 25, 2024, to comply with the Digital Markets Act. The changes included introducing “Alternative App Marketplaces” (also called alternative app distribution), new payment options, and alternative browser engines. However, the implementation required marketplace developers to provide a €1 million letter of credit, submit to Apple’s notarization process, and pay various fees including the Core Technology Fee. The European Commission opened non-compliance investigations against Apple on March 25, 2024, and sent preliminary findings on June 24, 2024, that Apple’s business terms continued to impose anti-competitive provisions. Sources: Apple Newsroom - EU Changes Announcement ↗, Brookings - Overseeing App Stores Under the DMA ↗, TechPolicy.Press - Understanding Apple Non-Compliance ↗ ↩
Google announced in August 2025 that it would require all Android app developers to undergo identity verification and register with Google, regardless of whether they distribute through Google Play or alternative channels. The policy requires developers to provide legal name, address, email, phone number, and government-issued ID, plus pay the $25 registration fee. Early access began in October 2025, with full enforcement starting in September 2026 in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand, followed by global rollout in 2027. Sources: Announcement - Android Developer Blog ↗, Keep Android Open ↗ ↩
F-Droid published a detailed response to Google’s developer registration decree on September 29, 2025, warning that the policy represents an existential threat to the project and to software freedom on Android. Source: F-Droid - Google’s Developer Registration Decree ↗, F-Droid - What We Talk About When We Talk About Sideloading ↗ ↩

What We Talk About When We Talk About Sideloading

2025/10/28 - 6 min read - 1197 words

This is a cross-posting of an article I wrote for the F-Droid blog at: https://f-droid.org/en/2025/10/28/sideloading.html ↗. As well as managing the App Fair Project, I also serve on the F-Droid board of directors.

We recently published a blog post with our reaction to the new Google Developer Program and how it impacts your freedom to use the devices that you own in the ways that you want. The post garnered quite a lot of feedback and interest from the community and press, as well as various civil society groups and regulatory agencies.

In this post, I hope to clarify and expand on some of the points and rebut some of the counter-messaging that we have witnessed.

Google’s message that “Sideloading is Not Going Away” is clear, concise, and false

Shortly after our post was published, Google aired an episode ↗ of their Android Developers Roundtable series, where they state unequivocally that “sideloading isn’t going anywhere”. They follow-up with a blog post ↗:

Does this mean sideloading is going away on Android? Absolutely not. Sideloading is fundamental to Android and it is not going away.

This statement is untrue. The developer verification decree effectively ends the ability for individuals to choose what software they run on the devices they own.

It bears reminding that “sideload” is a made-up term. Putting software on your computer is simply called “installing”, regardless of whether that computer is in your pocket or on your desk. This could perhaps be further precised as “direct installing”, in case you need to make a distinction between obtaining software the old-fashioned way versus going through a rent-seeking intermediary marketplace like the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store.

Regardless, the term “sideload” was coined to insinuate that there is something dark and sinister about the process, as if the user were making an end-run around safeguards that are designed to keep you protected and secure. But if we reluctantly accept that “sideloading” is a term that has wriggled its way into common parlance, then we should at least use a consistent definition for it. Wikipedia’s summary definition ↗ is:

the transfer of apps from web sources that are not vendor-approved

By this definition, Google’s statement that “sideloading is not going away” is simply false. The vendor — Google, in the case of Android certified devices — will, in point of fact, be approving the source. The supplicant app developer must register with Google, pay a fee, provide government identification, agree to non-negotiable (and ever-changing) terms and conditions, enumerate all their current and future application identifiers, upload evidence of their private signing key, and then hope and wait for Google’s approval.

What this means for your rights

You, the consumer, purchased your Android device believing in Google’s promise that it was an open computing platform and that you could run whatever software you choose on it. Instead, starting next year, they will be non-consensually pushing an update to your operating system that irrevocably blocks this right and leaves you at the mercy of their judgement over what software you are permitted to trust.

You, the creator, can no longer develop an app and share it directly with your friends, family, and community without first seeking Google’s approval. The promise of Android — and a marketing advantage it has used to distinguish itself against the iPhone — has always been that it is “open”. But Google clearly feels that they have enough of a lock on the Android ecosystem, along with sufficient regulatory capture, that they can now jettison this principle with prejudice and impunity.

You, the state, are ceding the rights of your citizens and your own digital sovereignty to a company with a track record of complying with the extrajudicial demands of authoritarian regimes to remove perfectly legal apps that they happen to dislike. The software that is critical to the running of your businesses and governments will be at the mercy of the opaque whims of a distant and unaccountable corporation. Monocultures are perilous not just in agriculture, but in software distribution as well.

As a reminder, this applies not just to devices that exclusively use the Google Play Store: this is for every Android Certified device everywhere in the world, which encompasses over 95% of all Android devices outside of China. Regardless of whether the device owner prefers to use a competing app store like the Samsung Galaxy Store or the Epic Games Store, or a free and open-source app repository like F-Droid, they will be captive to the overarching policies unilaterally dictated by a competing corporate entity.

The place of greater safety

In promoting their developer registration program, Google purports ↗:

Our recent analysis found over 50 times more malware from internet-sideloaded sources than on apps available through Google Play.

We haven’t seen this recent analysis — or any other supporting evidence — but the “50 times” multiple does certainly sound like great cause for distress (even if it is a surprisingly round number). But given the recent news ↗ of “224 malicious apps removed from the Google Play Store after ad fraud campaign discovered”, we are left to wonder whether their energies might better be spent assessing and improving their own safeguards rather than casting vague disparagements against the software development communities that thrive outside their walled garden.

In addition, other recent news ↗ of over 19 million downloads of malware from the Play Store leads us to question whether the sole judgement of a single corporate entity can be trusted to identify and assess malware, especially when that judgement is clouded by commercial incentives that may not align with the well-being of their users.

What can be done?

Google has been facing public outcry against their heavy-handed policies for a long time, but this trend has accelerated recently. Last year they crippled ad-blockers ↗ in Chrome and Chromium-based browsers by forcing through their unpopular “manifest v3” requirement for plugins, and earlier this year they closed off ↗ the development of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), which is how they were able to clandestinely implement the verification infrastructure that enforces their developer registration decree.

Developer verification is an existential threat to free software distribution platforms like F-Droid as well as emergent commercial competitors to the Play Store. We are witnessing a groundswell of opposition to this attempt from both our user and developer communities, as well as the tech press and civil society groups, but public policymakers still need to be educated about the threat.

To learn more about what you can do as a consumer, visit keepandroidopen.org ↗ for information on how to contact your representative agencies and advocate for keeping the Android ecosystem open for consumers and competition.

If you are an app developer, we recommend against signing yourself up for Google’s developer registration program at this time. We unequivocally reject their attempt to force this program upon the world.

Over half of all humankind uses an Android smartphone. Google does not own your phone. You own your phone. You have the right to decide who to trust, and where you can get your software from.

Free App Stores and Google's Developer Registration Decree

2025/09/29 - 6 min read - 1147 words

This is a cross-posting of an article I wrote for the F-Droid blog at: https://f-droid.org/en/2025/09/29/google-developer-registration-decree.html ↗. As well as managing the App Fair Project, I also serve on the F-Droid board of directors.

For the past 15 years ↗, F-Droid has provided a safe and secure haven for Android users around the world to find and install free and open source apps. When contrasted with the commercial app stores — of which the Google Play store is the most prominent — the differences are stark: they are hotbeds of spyware and scams, blatantly promoting apps that prey on their users through attempts to monetize their attention and mine their intimate information through any means necessary, including trickery and dark patterns ↗.

F-Droid is different. It distributes apps that have been validated to work for the user’s interests, rather than for the interests of the app’s distributors. The way F-Droid works is simple: when a developer creates an app and hosts the source code publicly somewhere, the F-Droid team reviews it, inspecting it to ensure that it is completely open source and contains no undocumented anti-features ↗ such as advertisements or trackers. Once it passes inspection, the F-Droid build service compiles and packages the app to make it ready for distribution. The package is then signed either with F-Droid’s cryptographic key, or, if the build is reproducible ↗, enables distribution using the original developer’s private key. In this way, users can trust that any app distributed through F-Droid is the one that was built from the specified source code and has not been tampered with.

Do you want a weather app that doesn’t transmit your every movement ↗ to a shadowy data broker? Or a scheduling assistant that doesn’t siphon your intimate details ↗ into an advertisement network? F-Droid has your back. Just as sunlight is the best disinfectant against corruption, open source is the best defense against software acting against the interests of the user.

Google’s move to break free app distribution

The future of this elegant and proven system was put in jeopardy last month, when Google unilaterally decreed ↗ that Android developers everywhere in the world are going to be required to register centrally with Google. In addition to demanding payment of a registration fee and agreement to their (non-negotiable and ever-changing) terms and conditions, Google will also require the uploading of personally identifying documents ↗, including government ID, by the authors of the software, as well as enumerating ↗ all the unique “application identifiers” for every app that is to be distributed by the registered developer.

The F-Droid project cannot require that developers register their apps through Google, but at the same time, we cannot “take over” the application identifiers for the open-source apps we distribute, as that would effectively seize exclusive distribution rights to those applications.

If it were to be put into effect, the developer registration decree will end the F-Droid project and other free/open-source app distribution sources as we know them today, and the world will be deprived of the safety and security of the catalog of thousands of apps that can be trusted and verified by any and all. F-Droid’s myriad users will be left adrift, with no means to install — or even update their existing installed — applications. (How many F-Droid users are there, exactly? We don’t know, because we don’t track users or have any registration: “No user accounts, by design” ↗)

The Security Canard

While directly installing — or “sideloading” — software can be construed as carrying some inherent risk, it is false to claim that centralized app stores are the only safe option for software distribution. Google Play itself has repeatedly ↗ hosted ↗ malware, proving that corporate gatekeeping doesn’t guarantee user protection. By contrast, F-Droid offers a trustworthy and transparent alternative approach to security: every app is free and open source, the code can be audited by anyone, the build process and logs are public, and reproducible builds ensure that what is published matches the source code exactly. This transparency and accountability provides a stronger basis for trust than closed platforms, while still giving users freedom to choose. Restricting direct app installation not only undermines that choice, it also erodes the diversity and resilience of the open-source ecosystem by consolidating control in the hands of a few corporate players.

Furthermore, Google’s framing that they need to mandate developer registration in order to defend against malware is disingenuous because they already have a remediation mechanism for malware they identify on a device: the Play Protect service ↗ that is enabled on all Android Certified devices already scans and disables apps that have been identified as malware, regardless of their provenience. Any perceived risks associated with direct app installation can be mitigated through user education, open-source transparency, and existing security measures without imposing exclusionary registration requirements.

We do not believe that developer registration is motivated by security. We believe it is about consolidating power and tightening control over a formerly open ecosystem.

The Right to Run

If you own a computer, you should have the right to run whatever programs you want on it. This is just as true with the apps on your Android/iPhone mobile device as it is with the applications on your Linux/Mac/Windows desktop or server. Forcing software creators into a centralized registration scheme in order to publish and distribute their works is as egregious as forcing writers and artists to register with a central authority in order to be able to distribute their creative works. It is an offense to the core principles of free speech and thought that are central to the workings of democratic societies around the world.

By tying application identifiers to personal ID checks and fees, Google is building a choke point that restricts competition and limits user freedom. It must find a solution which preserves user rights, freedom of choice, and a healthy, competitive ecosystem.

What do we propose?

Regulatory and competition authorities should look carefully at Google’s proposed activities, and ensure that policies designed to improve security are not abused to consolidate monopoly control. We urge regulators to safeguard the ability of alternative app stores and open-source projects to operate freely, and to protect developers who cannot or will not comply with exclusionary registration schemes and demands for personal information.

If you are a developer or user who values digital freedom, you can help. Write to your Member of Parliament ↗, Congressperson ↗ or other representative, sign petitions in defense of sideloading and software freedom, and contact ↗ the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) team to express why preserving open distribution matters. By making your voice heard, you help defend not only F-Droid, but the principle that software should remain a commons, accessible and free from unnecessary corporate gatekeeping.

Apple DMA Compliance Workshop

2024/03/18 - 6 min read - 1093 words

Update: The video for the workshop has been made available at https://webcast.ec.europa.eu/compliance-with-the-dma-apple-2024-03-18 ↗. I’ve updated the blog post with timecodes for each of the questions and answers listed herein.

On March 18th I attended an EC-hosted workshop¹ in Brussels on Apple’s compliance measures for the Digital Markets Act. It was a grueling 8-hour affair in a hot windowless room. There were around 75 attendees by my count, from a wide cross-section of organizations, few of whom seemed to feel that Apple was upholding the letter and spirit of the law in their compliance efforts.

Apple’s team of three, headed by Kyle Andeer (formerly an FTC trial lawyer), gamely managed to fend off the barrage, mostly by appealing to Apple’s paramount respect for “user security, privacy and safety” over and over again. The questions tended to be hostile and self-serving, and the responses tended to be vacuous, non-committal, and lacking any technical substance. In short, it went as one might expect.

Questioners were selected randomly from the attendees (both in-person and online). I managed to get two in. Following are my questions and their responses (pulled out of a whisper-generated transcript from the video, which can be accessed here ↗).

Question (Marc Prud’hommeaux, the App Fair Project) [12:25:41] (transcript link ↗):

Hi, my name is Marc Prud’hommeaux, and I’m here representing the nonprofit App Fair Project, which is building an app marketplace to create and distribute free and open source apps as non-commercial digital public goods.

To be approved for an iPhone app marketplace entitlement, Apple is currently requiring that an organization, either 1: have been an Apple developer program member for two years and have an app that has been downloaded one million times in the EU in the previous year.

We’ve been a developer program member since April of 2022, but it’s impossible for us to satisfy the download count requirement because the web browser app that we submitted that year was rejected by Apple.

Option number 2: provide a one million euro standby letter of credit from an A-rated institution as has been discussed.

That number presents a discriminatory and insurmountable barrier to a nonprofit organization such as ours.

I’ve requested an exemption from our Apple representative and was denied.

My question is, since nonprofit organizations are exempt from the core technology fee, what is the rationale for requiring any letter of credit at all?

And what is the objective fairness and reasonableness standard that prevents Apple from increasing that number to 10 million euros or 100 million euros or some arbitrarily high amount that would effectively exclude all alternative app marketplaces at some point in the future?

Answer (Kyle Andeer, Apple Vice President of Products and Regulatory Law) [12:33:24] (transcript link ↗):

Again, when we think about alternative marketplaces and this was something we thought about for a long period of time, we wanted to assure that we had credible and accountable operators of stores and we want to have a single set of objective criteria.

We did not want to have special deals.

We did not want to have special assessments because as soon as you do that, you open yourself up to charges of discrimination.

And so what we focused on was what is a set of criteria that we could apply to make sure that the operators of these stores were credible and accountable and responsible.

And those were the two criteria that we established in addition to some of the other things I talked about, which is the other commitments, whether it’s engaged and ongoing monitoring of fraud to comply with laws like the DSA or the GDPR to publishing transparent data collection policies.

All these other things are important, but at the end of the day, if you don’t have an accountable and responsible operator, then those things mean nothing.

And so what we tried to do, and again, I think I answered this in response to an earlier question, we looked to find criteria that would allow us to have some confidence that the operator is someone we can trust to operate a store in the best interest of our users.

There may be others, and so we welcome feedback about what other criteria could we use to accomplish the goal that we’ve set out.

So we’re going to continue and see how things emerge.

Clearly, it hasn’t been an issue for a number of different developers, some of which we’ve heard from today, some of which we know are out there in terms of being able to secure the line of credit to allow them to enter this program.

Question (Marc Prud’hommeaux, the App Fair Project) [16:04:26] (transcript link ↗):

Hi, Marc Prud’hommeaux from the App Fair Project.

The specific apps that people install and run, including where and when they launch them, can be considered sensitive information when it comes to political and social activity, women’s health and free speech.

Does Apple track personally identifiable information about which apps are installed from third-party marketplaces and where and when they are when the apps are launched?

If so, Apple may be compelled to disclose this information to any of the various legal jurisdictions they operate in.

This could jeopardize vulnerable users.

Will this app installation launch activity still be reported to Apple, even when they opt out of sharing analytics with Apple?

Answer (Gary Davis, Apple Data Protection Officer) [16:08:24] (transcript link ↗):

In that instance, I’m going to somewhat highlight Apple track record in relation to responding to requests from law enforcement where we consider that the requests are disproportionate or inappropriate and clearly in such circumstances we have shown that we will raise questions about those requests and where appropriate pushback.

Obviously, if a request is lawful and is proportionate, we do our best to assist law enforcement in those circumstances.

Where we do have personal data associated with the download of an app, it is simply the download of an app.

It doesn’t indicate anything about usage.

We do not collect any information about your individual usage of an app in a personally identifiable way.

Some will come from analytics that is shared with developers, but that’s across the population of users, not individual users.

And the same installed information that we have from the App Store will be available for app marketplace downloads as well.

https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/events-poolpage/apple-dma-compliance-workshop-2024-03-18_en ↗ ↩