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She lusted after lovers with genitals as large as a donkey’s and emissions like those of a horse. 21 And so, Oholibah, you relived your former days as a young girl in Egypt, when you first allowed your breasts to be fondled.

Ezekiel 23:20

My reading is they were simply trying to comply with regulations. It wasn't about what ideas they believed the religious texts were trying to convey, but whether their content met a certain definition set by law. The law could be poorly written, or it could be poorly and over-cautiously interpreted by F-Droid maintainers. But I didn't get the feeling they were acting on any kind of moral judgement or own belief about what's appropriate for children.

Does the Bible encourage violence or promiscuity? Not really, no. Does it mention and describe those things in some detail? Yes, absolutely. If that's the kind of content you need to remove from your store, then obviously you need to remove the Bible from your store. Whether that was really the case seems questionable at best, but the stated logic seemed pretty coherent to me.

Ironic as Governments use religion to oppress. In facts it's one of religions primary roles.

Even mainstream religions are seen at brainwashing cults by many people and my guess is it was something along these lines. They thought they were contributing to the greater good by keeping people from being indoctrinated into a cult. I don't agree but I've seen many self-proclaimed atheists make such statements.

> a sincere belief that these apps contained content unsafe for minors

Hey I believe that too. If people are entitled to believe whatever is written in those books, surely people are also entitled to believe it's nonsense and actively harmful.

Even with Google's changes, F-Droid will continue to work with Android phones that do not use Google GMS.

If you care about your actually owning your device, install something else than stock OS. I would recommend GrapheneOS, since the security of some/most other alternatives is pretty bad.

As of now, Google isn't destroying non-Google android installs, so F-droid will still work there (correct me if wrong). So until Google takes android fully closed or succeeds in getting popular/necessary apps to blacklist non-Google-verified devices, F-droid still has a role

Is there a KDE/GNOME/kernel-like group forming to take over Android AOSP development and provide free alternative yet?

I hope so. The changes can mean two things: people can only use it easily in custom roms (I guess there is an overlap there) or they actually would play with Google: i guess technically they could as well register and sign the stuff with a Google key as the software is all FOSS and would allow defining another responsible developer (otherwise Google would have to through out all FOSS without CLA from their playstore). I guess quitting would be an option, but IMHO the outrage outside the bubble would probably be hardly noticable, so what would be the point?

Just recalling from memory, Linus Torvalds wasn't making a free and open source kernel at first. He was making a kernel yes, but he attended a Richard Stallman speech where Stallman introduced GNU and expressed that he needed a kernel cause AT&T was cracking down on Unix clones. And Linus was moved by that enough to change gears and renamed the project to Linus Unix aka Linux. Anyone who remembers better or has sources, correct me below, I'm writing from memory. My point is though that Linus wasn't originally intending to make a free and open source kernel.

what do you even mean?! start what at the kernel?

kernel is locked and most phones can't be rooted anymore