[philistine]

> The status quo may not be perfect but it is the best we can do.

Nope. We could, for example, ask developers to register with their legal identity to release apps.

[dmantis]

The original post laids out why it's not possible to do well: privacy apps, sanctioned countries, apps made by people for themselves to avoid clouds and third parties, etc.

Simple example: I have a foss VPN app running on my phone to avoid censorship and surveillance in some countries I visit. While using this app is no problem, non-anonymous development might carry consequences to the developer in some dictatorship jurisdictions (which are plenty of). I'm not sure all devs of such system would be willing to give their ids.

Another example is that this way US can cut out countries and people they don't like from mobile usage (which basically equals to modern social life). Look into sanctioned judges of international court because US protects war criminals.

[bigstrat2003]

That would be worse than the status quo.

[pas]

the open source community should ask for their own install key and that's it

Play store can be fast and verification based and the F/OSS stores can be slower, reputation and review based.

...

But fundamentally the easiest thing is to ask people to pay to unlock the phone's security barriers, this makes it harder and costlier for scammers.

[hellojesus]

Why would I want to be beholden to any authority to run software on a device I own?