- cross-posted to:
- opensource@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- opensource@programming.dev
Yesterday, Pebble watch software was ~95% open source. Today, it’s 100% open source. You can download, compile and run all the software you need to use your Pebble. We just published the source code for the new Pebble mobile app!
Apparently the packaging requirements for F-Droid are more challenging than just “must be open source” and aren’t for everybody.
https://f-droid.org/en/docs/Inclusion_Policy/
The “no Google Play services” alone are a non starter for many apps. My preferred messenger, Signal, is plenty open source and runs its own notification daemon, but cannot be found on F-Droid. I have to get it via Obtainium instead.
I think Mastodon and Element use Google’s push notification service.
I have microG installed, and both apps show up as registered for cloud messaging.
Element on fdroid uses ntfy push notifications or background sync.
“No Google Play services” falls under “app must be FOSS”. The average publicly developed open source app should not have much trouble getting into F-Droid if the developer wants to. Google Play services consists of several components, one of which is a proprietary library included in apps using it. If your app includes proprietary code, it is not FOSS.
If Signal decided a build without proprietary blobs isn’t worth it, they’re not getting into F-Droid. Forks of Signal exist that remove the Google Play services build requirement, those are in F-Droid.
Like Molly. I use it and it’s great. I’m using the FOSS version.
You can even selfhost the push server.
Sorry but F-Droid allows many apps that use “undesirable” networks and services but for no reason that I can see snuffs out the one wholly supported notification system on literally all android devices. Its plug and play. Its got no place in the “Free” part of FOSS but it’s still intentionally more challenging to get around.
The difference is what code runs on your device. If proprietary libraries are included, F-Droid won’t build it, and it’s not allowed in their repository. There’s a lot to say about whether a FOSS app that relies on proprietary network services is truly “free”, there’s no arguing that an app with proprietary code blobs is “free”.
Take for example an app like NewPipe. The application itself doesn’t include proprietary code, but it contacts YouTube, a proprietary Google service. With the app itself being open source, you can tell exactly what it is doing on your device, and what information is sent over the network. Comparing that to something like Signal, which includes proprietary Google libraries, you’d have to decompile and reverse engineer it to try and figure out what it’s doing.
If you have a FOSS library that interacts with Google Play Services or microG to enable FCM, it would (probably) be allowed on F-Droid. (I’m not on their team, I can’t make a definitive statement about this).
You can get Molly on F-Droid. It’s a soft fork that iimplements UnifiedPush, among other things.
In addition to this, Signal can be downloaded from their own website and has a self update mechanism. It also does not depend on google play services (which I don’t have on my android phone)
Signal, the messenger that lags code sumps for a year so they can get a leg up with insider knowledge of their own cryptocurrency?