Hello,

I would like to point to a particular problem with using free software variants of the Android operating system (LineageOS, etc.): namely proprietary apps that detect if the phone's software is modified (by rooting or installing custom ROMs) and then refuse to run if it is so.

Google makes this easy with its DRM mechanism called Google Play Integrity.

This is particularly problematic with software that is important in daily life, for example banking [1] and government-provided apps. For example, Polish mObywatel and Ukrainian Diia belong to this category. These apps are published by the respective governments and used for increasingly many government-provided services. They refuse to work on LineageOS.

Recently, the proposed version of the eIDAS 2.0 directive seems to require such behavior of government-issued ID apps. I hope that there is still time for some advocacy work to revert such changes.

I am afraid that this problem will get worse with time as more people will be forced not to root their phones. Because of that, rooted phones will get less frequent and it would be easier for app developers to justify blocking them. Reversing this situation would then be difficult.

This is going to kill in practice what remains of open source in Android.

Greetings,

Mateusz Jończyk

[1] Reddit thread: Safety Net is making it harder to use or advocate for LineageOS, https://www.reddit.com/r/LineageOS/comments/sa3qkq/safety_net_is_making_it_h...