This is why, despite all its shortcomings, Android still is a more open platform compared to iOS. Big thanks to F-Droid and the open source Android community.
I had another comment refuting the GP (as you are), but the more I thought about it, I decided to delete the comment.
At the end of the day, you have to pay $99/year to publish on the Apple App Store, and on Android, although Google has had some shady practices around automatically flagging/removing apps from it's store, you have more options in terms of app distribution, such as F-Droid.
To my (now deleted) comment's point though, I don't see much of a relation between F-Droid and NewPipe, besides that F-Droid hosts it.
EDIT: other comment on this thread answers that last point I made and your question, and sums up what NewPipe has to do with the "openness" of the platforms [1]. However, I now wonder, what is stopping Google/YouTube from going after NewPipe & F-Droid?
Not just the money & the need to obtain another protform for app development (MacOS) but also the te inability to public GPL apps on app store (if you manage to get that far):
Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not very familiar with iOS, but it's not so much F-Droid that makes Android great, but rather the fact that you are allowed to install apps outside of the Play Store. As far as I know, that's not possible on iOS without jailbreak (or the whole Testflight stuff that was being abused).
F-Droid is just a visible example of that functionality.
Interesting, thanks. I wonder how such an app would go if it only supported ad-free viewing for Youtube Premium accounts. So that the point would be additional features, not blocking ads.
Even in a world where Apple does not prevent YouTube alternative clients in its app store, it would probably prevent alternative clients for its own services.
Or, an app that would go as far as doing such deviant things as providing its own custom web engine and allow an iPad 2 to remain relevant and useful in 2020.
