I always have been a bit into the prepper mentality, but it does smells very fishy when it is not talked by individuals or small communities but rather organized from the top-down nation-states… The reason is because the former us driven by a “just in case” theme while the other is “preparing the population for war”; Both are very different in nature, one is purely defensive while the other is always coupled with strong offensive measures, not to mention it also polarizes people into war-like environment and censorship of dissidents.

I presume the concern is governments banning apps left and right so a federated repository will be mostly immune from that. But you are right, technologically is not as straight forward.

What surprised me is that F-Droid is avoided by many FOSS enthusiasts (due to signing it themselves so delayed updates and potential tampering). Aurora is great but 100% on Google’s merci and Google frequently cuts its winds. Did not know Aptoide was community based… have to check it out.