You will always be able to download Termux from outside Play. I actually have no idea how Termux could even work within Play policy seeing as it's essentially a 3rd-party repo not unlike F-Droid. You wouldn't expect to find F-Droid on the Play store, surely? You have to sideload it, and then it just works.

But that doesn’t mean much when the SELinux hammer drops and no app can exec no matter where it’s installed from.

This will cut the developers out of a revenue stream though, as they provide optional Termux add-ons for a fee on the Play Store to support their development.

I donated, but I'm obviously part of a minority of users.

Wouldn't be the first app that runs into issues with Google's benevolent inclusion of their code in the Google store. I'm sure F-Droid will continue to deliver Termux, especially for the specific Termux audience.

At some point these restrictions to exec() will be enforced on the OS level, rather than on the API level.

Isn't that the same thing in Android? SELinux, which I read elsewhere in this thread is where this is built into, is part of the system in which your app runs.

Yes, but the configuration of SELinux can be changed.

Not without root. Termux is very useful even on a non-rooted phone.

Ultimately Google has super-root to your Android device, and Google will change SELinux settings to lockout Termux and things like it.

They had 2 years to react to that change.

I am the first one to decry the absurd power that apple and (to a lesser extent) google have on what you can run on your own device, but this isn't it.

This has been discussed for over a year at least, there is currently no solution (that the developers consider acceptable, proot is an option they don't). As each day passes we move closer to the app being banned from the Play Store (or at least updates being banned).