What the Inclusion Criteria Actually Say
F-Droid, the community-run Android repository operating since 2010, applies a definition of free software that most commercial app stores do not approach. Every application accepted into the main repository is compiled by F-Droid's own build servers from publicly auditable source code — not submitted as a pre-built binary by a developer. The F-Droid inclusion policy lists the grounds for exclusion explicitly: proprietary libraries bundled in the binary, calls to non-free network services, advertising frameworks, and tracking or analytics code all earn flags rather than silent acceptance.
Those flags are surfaced to users as Anti-Features — a formal taxonomy that labels applications carrying advertising, tracking dependencies, or requirements to use a proprietary service. An app is not necessarily removed for carrying an Anti-Feature, but the flag is visible at the point of installation. The distinction matters: F-Droid separates "this application is open source" from "this application is free as in freedom in operation," a line that Google Play and the Apple App Store draw nowhere.
The source-compilation requirement carries a practical cost. A developer who submits an application must expose a reproducible build path; any dependency that cannot be compiled from source blocks inclusion in the main repository. Reproducible builds — in which any party compiling the same source with the same toolchain should produce a bit-for-bit identical output — are an active goal of the project rather than a theoretical aspiration. This is a harder bar than the Open Source Initiative's licence-approval process sets, and it is why the main repository remains small relative to Play Store volume.
The governance model is equally distinct. F-Droid is operated by a volunteer community without a corporate parent or mandatory revenue model, which makes it structurally unlike the open-core commercial platforms it sits alongside. The Sovereign Tech Fund, the German federal programme that has directed public money toward critical open-source infrastructure, listed F-Droid among its funded projects — an acknowledgement that volunteer-run distribution infrastructure carries real maintenance costs that honour-system funding does not reliably cover.
The question F-Droid implicitly poses to the wider app-store ecosystem is not about market share. It is about what "free" means once a piece of software phones home to a proprietary API. F-Droid's answer — flag it, label it, and let the user decide with full information — is a policy position, not just a technical one, and it remains the clearest articulation of that position in mainstream Android distribution.