Cost. Not financial, time. I have to release on Google Play, because everyone is there, so its the easiest place to attract users. Adding fdroid or whatever else doubles the amount of time and effort i have to spend on releasing my app. Even creating a release on github isnt free in terms of time and effort.
this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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Also why bother releasing a plain old APK when someone can use apkmirror to grab it manually. Though at least adding an APK is relatively easy.
And if you are releasing the app manually you need some handling for updates (or informing users to install an update on their own). At least in Google Play users tend to stay relatively up to date. Otherwise any time someone reaches out about an issue you'll be more likely to find them on older versions, wasting a bit of your time.
Getting stuff onto F-Droid is hard; you have to design for their build system.
Google Play has a thing where if you design for their build system, they will do all the builds and hold the signing keys. So then you don't have to worry about keeping a signing key safe from various malicious government agencies.
I guess it's just more convenient, though it's really rare that a dev doesn't share the apk files on Github
I've got a cousin that does exactly that, and it's like everyone already said; maintaining multiple "stores" takes more time than it's worth usually.
Now, he did say that some apps are better off not being on the play store because the use case is for people that are more FOSS oriented, and/or do things that Google doesn't like (like anything that fucks with ads as an example). But his stuff is like a lot of the open source on the play store; he does it because he's willing to share things he makes for himself, but isn't willing to jump through multiple hoops to share it.
And, open source or not, if someone wants to get paid for their apps, there's only two realistic places to publish them; play store and amazon store. The amazon route is a joke for any developer I've ever talked to.
Oh, as an aside, I did ask my cousin if he'd just send me the APKs for the ones he's done. His response? Git gud nub. Told me to compile or die lol.
Not everyone wants to maintain multiple release branches. They’re offering the app in the way the majority of users will install it, and unfortunately your use case is less common.
Ask them?
I think a big value to these questions are when someone who does OPs question responds with their reasoning. This might get better responses in a programming or mobile community but they kind of did by posting.