[android-developers] New warning when exporting Android application

We have an app that was first submitted to Android Market several years ago. We've published several updates and are preparing a new update. We recently started receiving the following warning when exporting a signed .apk file:

Certificate expires on Thu Sep 16 19:19:35 EDT 2038.

The Certificate expires in 25 years.

Make sure the certificate is valid for the planned lifetime of the product.

If the certificate expires, you will be forced to sign your application with a different one.

Applications cannot be upgraded if their certificate changes from one version to another, forcing a full uninstall/install, which will make the user lose his/her data.

Google Play(Android Market) currently requires certificates to be valid until 2033.

Since the certificate expires in 25 years plus 7 weeks, I wonder why I'm getting this warning. Of much more concern, however, is the last line. Is the expiration date requirement (currently 2033) a sliding window? (In other words, will Google Play next year require certificates to be valid until 2034?) If so, does that apply to certificates applied to product updates? Because if it does, then the effective life of our product will have been reduced by 20 years, since we won't be able to update it starting five years from now.

Just as bad, if, in order to maintain our product we need to change certificates in five years (instead of 25), then (as I understand it) Google Play will treat a release signed with a new certificate as an entirely new product. This is because (again, I may not understand this exactly correctly) if the certificate changes, we will be forced to also change the package name for the apk. This will do great damage to our position in the market.

Can someone provide some clarity here? All of these constraints regarding signing certificates seems extremely unforgiving to publishers.

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