The big download button just makes it easier for people to install F-Droid for the first time. That message is a generic one, shown in the repo page for each app. It means:
- if you aren’t downloading from F-Droid itself, you won’t receive updates (because you may not have F-Droid installed)
- and you are avoiding the verification F-Droid app do for itself.
Obviously the first point doesn’t have sense if you are downloading F-Droid. The second point is the verification that we are discussing right here.
I agree with the argument that some verification method should be shown or linked under the big button. (See the P.S. edit below)
Also, the big button lets you download the most recent stable version of F-Droid (right now, 0.102). From the repo page for F-Droid app you can download any version, including release candidates (like 0.103-alpha1 onwards to 0.103.2)
Edit: A GPG key seems to exist on https://f-droid.org/FDroid.apk.asc for the big button APK (https://f-droid.org/FDroid.apk). It matches with the 0.102 release GPG (https://f-droid.org/repo/org.fdroid.fdroid_102050.apk.asc)
P.S.: We should notify these issues to the F-Droid team!
Edit: Let’s see if we can solve this from the begining in the next website: https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroid-website/merge_requests/83