Make app available via F-Droid

[arashpayan]

The app doesn't currently meet the requirements for inclusion in F-Droid. Things that would need to be changed/removed/optional:

• Google Maps SDK for tiles - would need to run a tile server
• Firebase push messages - would need to have a persistent foreground service remain connected with the API server, and battery life would be worse.
• Usage of the FusedLocationProvider API - no equivalent replacement here available. Location accuracy and battery life would be worse. (UPDATE 2025-10-15: SDK 31 introduced a fused provider type in AOSP Location Services. Apps just need to request that provider when requesting location updates.)
• Usage of the locationiq.com API

[IzzySoft]

• Google Maps SDK could probably be replaced by a corresponding OSM SDK. A peek into these Java projects (which use OSM) might give a clue.
• Push messages: some options are listed here – and I try to keep that list up-to-date and welcome pointers to add.
• FusedLocationProvider: maybe the microG project has some fitting code? Their UnifiedNlp covers that topic. They even provided the (Corona) Exposure API (a FOSS pendant to Google's) as library to be directly included with apps, which eg. the new Corona Tracing app for Germany uses – listed at F-Droid since this Monday.

While approaching these culprits one-by-one, you can watch progress e.g. here – I've just added your app to my repo. Scroll down to the library section and toggle the "xx libraries detected" field, it will then reveal details. Libraries marked by a Ⓓ (Non-Free Dependency) or Ⓝ (Non-Free Network) are the current culprits (luckily no Ⓣ like Tracking among them – thanks!) – at the time of this writing, there are 4 of those. Watch them disappear while tackling the issue here 😃

[arashpayan]

hey @IzzySoft. On the Zood Location page of your F-Droid repo where it mentions that Firebase is in the app, does it take it account the 3 excludes I'm using in my build.gradle to make sure the undesirable elements of Firebase are not included in the app? Here's the snippet in question from my build.gradle file:

    implementation ('com.google.firebase:firebase-messaging:20.2.1', {
        exclude group: 'com.google.firebase', module: 'firebase-core'
        exclude group: 'com.google.firebase', module: 'firebase-analytics'
        exclude group: 'com.google.firebase', module: 'firebase-measurement-connector'
    })

[IzzySoft]

My library scanner doesn't look at the build.gradle – it looks inside the APK (the smali code generated by apktool). And there it finds e.g.

com/google/android/gms/internal/firebase_messaging
com/google/firebase/annotations
com/google/firebase/components
com/google/firebase/datatransport
com/google/firebase/encoders/config
com/google/firebase/encoders/json
com/google/firebase/events
com/google/firebase/heartbeatinfo
com/google/firebase/iid/internal
com/google/firebase/inject
com/google/firebase/installations/interop
com/google/firebase/installations/local
com/google/firebase/installations/remote
com/google/firebase/internal
com/google/firebase/messaging
com/google/firebase/platforminfo
com/google/firebase/provider

(and some more GMS hits)

[minax007]

As this app is open source compared to most other similar apps it would certainly increase the popularity to have it also in the base repository of F-Droid.

Background: Most of the F-Droid users are not using any other repository than the base repository.
And apps from other repositories are also not advertised on the F-Droid website.

[Kreuger]

This has been open for 3 yrs. Has there been any progress made?

[toas-koas]

Any news?

[hb0nd]

WRT replacing the gmaps sdk, a custom tile server isn't needed, as OpenFreeMap exists now :) https://openfreemap.org/

and maplibre of course: https://maplibre.org

MicroG also provides a fusedlocationprovider alternative library: organicmaps/organicmaps#9575

[HarriBuh]

Time to update this ticket. The app isn't open source due to its dependency on Google Maps atm.