I would like Mozilla to provide a genuinely first-class way to install and automatically update Firefox for Android without depending on a proprietary app store. Mozilla already publishes Firefox APKs, but the current experience effectively directs users toward Google Play and treats the direct APK route as an advanced/manual option. Mozilla's own documentation currently emphasizes Google Play for updates, while manually installed APKs do not provide the same automatic-update experience. I understand the security and UX concerns around distributing APKs directly. I don't think those concerns require proprietary app-store distribution to be the only practical solution, however. My suggestion is not simply "provide an APK." I would like Mozilla to: make the official APK/distribution options clearly discoverable from the Firefox website; support at least one non-proprietary Android distribution channel with automatic updates; seriously consider F-Droid as such a channel, or work with the F-Droid project toward a suitable official distribution arrangement; clearly document signing, provenance, update, and security mechanisms for non-Google distribution. F-Droid already demonstrates that automatic updates and user-controlled, FLOSS-oriented Android distribution are possible. There are legitimate technical questions around build configuration, signing, proprietary components, reproducibility, and release management, but those seem like engineering problems worth solving rather than reasons to leave this use case unsupported. I am not suggesting that Mozilla remove Google Play support. Google Play should remain an option. I am asking for the opposite: give Android users a real choice. Firefox is backed by a non-profit and is one of the most important FLOSS projects on the platform. Its distribution model should reflect the same principles of user choice, independence, transparency, and control. A user who does not use Google Play should not have to choose between an obscure/manual APK workflow and abandoning the official Firefox distribution path. Please consider making a secure, automatically updating, non-proprietary distribution channel a first-class part of Firefox for Android.
... View more