I am no Android dev, so sorry if I did not see it in the list, but is there also a try to rebuilt/re-make the library that Android apps have to embed to be able to receive push notifications through Google servers (GCM/Firebase)?
A big reason may be that Google has e.g. been catched to enabling telemetry in that library by default… That is obviously not a good thing.
Obviously, I am thinking of not only F-Droid here, but rather the whole community/many apps that may just want to have such a small lib that they can embed to be able to satisfy user’s need for reliable push notifications while not shipping closed-source code. That would e.g. make publishing apps on F-Droid with that technology possible…
While many of you might say I do not want to use this, we have to keep the reality in mind, i.e. many users do have Google Play Services installed anyway, so optional support for these in 100% FLOSS apps would be a great thing, IMHO.
Also, keep in mind that if you do use something like microG (Lineage MicroG) on your phone then that component is also FLOSS. And if nothing sensitive is sent over these push messages, this can be an acceptable trade-off.
Note I do not want to spark a discussion about whether this is good or not, this is something everybody has to decide for themselves. But I think it would be great to have the possibility to choose this trade-off, at least. (And personally, I’d like it.)
Basically it is the client lib’s counterpart to microG that is still missing…
Edit: Moved from Call for Help: making free software builds of the Android SDK.