...Does the author not understand that the Google Play Store is not the only distribution mechanism for apps? Why not just continue to distribute APKs for users to install manually?
I suspect it could be, however it sounds like the author has lost all motivation to continue work on syncthing android and has formally announced that no further development will be done. And as much as I like syncthing-android I appreciate this sort of straight forward communications more and salute the author for clearly stating intentions.
Now seeing as it is open source (hooray) The way I think that will go is as follows, we will continue using the existing apk(I get mine off f-droid) for a few months to years, in the meantime seeing as the app is so useful to so many a few forks will arise, one will end up being the best, and we will eventually start using that one.
Syncthing users chose Syncthing knowing they were going off the beaten path (that is, just using Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.) It's a Linux-first program and requires manual configuration in many cases. The least difficult part of setting it up was installing F-Droid.
Presumably because most people don't know about F-Droid, and there's a question of whether it's worth continuing to develop the app for a tiny subset of the original audience.
they do, but google play is the main distribution channel for android apps, and without that many people will not use it (and many will complain). from the actual announcement:
> without Play releases I do no longer see enough benefit and/or have enough motivation to keep up the ongoing maintenance
They do set how permissions on upgrades of Android work so even if it’s on f-droid, when they enforce the SAF protocols fsync will stop working if you keep your Android up to date
