The European Commission has published its first review of the Digital Markets Act 1 , the landmark regulation that was supposed to break the stranglehold of Big Tech gatekeepers on app distribution. The accompanying Staff Working Document 2 provides a detailed assessment of compliance across all designated gatekeepers. Despite the conclusion of the review being that the DMA “remains fit for…
I presented a talk on the FOSDEM main track in Brussels last weekend titled “Fear and Loathing in the App Stores” ( abstract ). It was amazing to see so much interest in the topic, and I had a lot of great conversations afterwards with folk who shared the alarm at the lack of choices, competition, and freedom. Following is my draft of the talk. My speaker notes weren’t working, so the talk as…
As 2025 draws to a close, it’s a good moment to pause and reflect on a year that proved to be both challenging and energizing for the App Fair Project. Building on the momentum of last year’s retrospective , 2025 saw the project deepen its advocacy work, expand its public presence, and respond to some of the most consequential shifts in the app ecosystem in over a decade. Free App Stores and…
This is a cross-posting of an article I wrote for the F-Droid blog at: https://f-droid.org/en/2025/10/28/sideloading.html . As well as managing the App Fair Project, I also serve on the F-Droid board of directors. We recently published a blog post with our reaction to the new Google Developer Program and how it impacts your freedom to use the devices that you own in the ways that you want. The…
I was honored to be invited as a panelist at the FSF 40-year celebration event in Boston this weekend. Along with Paige Collings, senior speech and privacy activist from the EFF, Devin Ulibarri, the executive director of Sugar Labs, and Greg Farough, the FSF’s campaigns manager, we spent an hour discussing issues around software freedom and privacy, and answered a variety of interesting questions…
This is a cross-posting of an article I wrote for the F-Droid blog at: https://f-droid.org/en/2025/09/29/google-developer-registration-decree.html . As well as managing the App Fair Project, I also serve on the F-Droid board of directors. For the past 15 years , F-Droid has provided a safe and secure haven for Android users around the world to find and install free and open source apps. When…
The App Fair Project requires that all apps that it distributes be licensed under the GNU General Public License. When the project builds and distributes these apps through to the commercial app store channels (e.g., the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store), the GPL is the one and only license that dictates the distribution terms. While many developers have historically chosen the GPL on…
I was recently interviewed about the App Fair Project for the FSFE’s Software Freedom Podcast . I had a great discussion with Bonnie Mehring about many aspects of the App Fair’s philosophy and mechanics. Your browser does not support the audio element. Transcript SFP#030: App Fair Project with Marc Prud'hommeaux <div class="timestamp">Bonnie</div> <div class="transcript-line">Before…
Last weekend I gave a talk at FOSDEM 2025 in Brussels titled: “A Free Software App Store for iOS: the App Fair Project’s perspective on the DMA”. The full description can be found at the FOSDEM overview . Here is the video and a transcript of the talk. I was overwhelmed by the support I received at FOSDEM, and would especially like to thank the Free Software Foundation Europe ( https://fsfe.org )…
As 2024 draws to a close, we reflect on the activities and progress of the App Fair Project. The year started out with anticipation of Apple’s compliance with the Digital Markets Act . As we wrote in last year’s retrospective , the expectation was that iOS would be granted the technological capabilities to create a storefront application that can download, install, and update apps independently of…
Update : The video for the workshop has been made available at https://webcast.ec.europa.eu/compliance-with-the-dma-apple-2024-03-18 . I’ve updated the blog post with timecodes for each of the questions and answers listed herein. On March 18th I attended an EC-hosted workshop 1 in Brussels on Apple’s compliance measures for the Digital Markets Act. It was a grueling 8-hour affair in a hot…
2023 was the first full year of the App Fair Project’s existence. This post looks back on the year, and towards 2024. The mission of the App Fair Project — as conceived in the Spring of 2022 — is to nurture and distribute global digital public goods in the form of mobile applications. In other words, we will make free and useful apps, and we will make them global. “Global” is meant both in…
With the announcement of the official Gatekeeper designations under the Digital Markets Act , iPhone owners will soon regain the ability to install apps from outside the confines of a single App Store. This capability has been blocked by the platform for years, requiring that owners of an iPhone obtain their software exclusively through a single platform-locked App Store, whose terms and…