In a post today Prud'hommeaux said that Google's planned changes are incompatible with F-Droid. "The F-Droid project cannot require that developers register their apps through Google, but at the same time, we cannot 'take over' the application identifiers for the open-source apps we distribute, as that would effectively seize exclusive distribution rights to those applications," he said.

"If it were to be put into effect, the developer registration decree will end the F-Droid project and other free/open source app distribution sources as we know them today," said Prud'hommeaux.

(From Google's dev registration plan 'will end the F-Droid project' by The Register which was linked here https://lemmy.world/post/36669429) I'm not so sure any of this is being sensationalized. Every time more details get discussed it becomes clear this is actually a lot worse than early coverage suggested.

People were talking about this just being bad for the privacy of devs, which would be bad enough alone. But if this structurally makes it so that fdroid can't distribute apps because the apps aren't registered to them, and are instead registered to their devs, that's pretty catastrophic

Its also become more clear as this has gotten more coverage that part of the impact would be requiring devs to agree to and comply Google terms and conditions. Which suggests that if what they distribute conflicts with those terms and conditions their ability to distribute apps may be taken.

If those are the same terms and conditions for the Google play store that routinely fuck over devs with no explanation for entirely reasonable shit that's really not good.