- 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.
“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.
Signal, the messenger that lags code sumps for a year so they can get a leg up with insider knowledge of their own cryptocurrency?
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)