F-Droid

Google's plan requires every Android developer to register centrally, hand over government ID and prove they hold the signing key, even for apps shared outside the Play Store. Power users keep a 9-step escape hatch with a mandatory 24-hour wait.

Commenters split on whether that wait is a fair compromise or the first turn of the screw. One of them brought up tech-support scams.

StreetComplete finds gaps in OpenStreetMap near you and turns each into a one-tap quest: is this street paved? what are this shop's opening hours? You answer on-site, and it writes straight to OSM in your name, with no editor and no tags to read first.

Its real trick, one contributor argued: hide OSM's intimidating tagging model until you actually need it, since most tools expose the schema too early. The flip side is that the complexity is hidden, not gone. Another mapper admitted he's never sure he tagged a crosswalk the 'right,' undocumented way.