What would be a nice way to introduce kids to alternative app stores apart from the usual proprietary stores?

General
1

I’m no dev nor any trained sales person. What, in your opinion, would be a very effective means of introducing open source app stores to kids who’re otherwise used to being fed from playstore, and believe that it’s the only universe in the galaxy ??:grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes::grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes::grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

2

Show them apps they like on F-Droid. If they like it they’ll use it.

1 Like
3

Kids are fine. By kids, l was actually referring to the college goers. For me, they’re kids :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes::grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes::grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

4

I haven’t successfully pursuaded someone, but here are some reasons I can think of

  • Privacy: I remember seeing this mentioned[1] on F-Droid’s blog and you can quote if needed
  • Ad-free experience: sweet! E.g. fluent user experience of VMPK for Android on F-Droid, vs lots of piano simulators on Xiaomi app store jammed with ads[2]
  • Easy legal: No hard-to-understand privacy policy etc spanning N pages, so legal-consious users feel more safe. Here’s Metiq’s for example.[3] (Might not apply to every app)
  • Some open source developers fix bugs and add features that the original developer/company doesn’t want to do, e.g. to prioritize adding another monetizing thing into their app. This has been happening with VS Code with this bug report for example being delayed for 4+ weeks. Read their recent release notes and you’ll see they’ve been developing their AI features and almost nothing else.[4] Similarly, my Fcitx keyboard does not have quirks that the Sogou keyboard customized for Xiaomi have, and has undo/redo features unavailable in that one.
  • Keep Android Open: Invite them to read keepandroidopen.org
  • You Just Get It For Free: intuitive enough I think :wink: If there’s something for free why not try it? and see if it fits your needs better?

  1. maybe more than one time ↩︎

  2. 10% piano, 90% ads, haha ↩︎

  3. Metiq has this policy only to comply with Google Play requirements. ↩︎

  4. Irrelevant to Android but can give you an idea of what “author doesn’t prioritize what people need” looks like ↩︎

1 Like
5

Thanks for your inputs. They’re extremely valuable.

1 Like