Signal/Wickr on F-Droid 2021?

Desso · January 14, 2021, 12:40am

Will Signal/Wickr be available on F-Droid 2021

dek · January 14, 2021, 6:57am

A fork of Signal for Android with passphrase lock. https://molly.im/fdroid/ Use F-Droid to install apps and ensure access to app updates

relan · January 14, 2021, 8:19am

No, because both are proprietary.

MrBook · January 15, 2021, 11:33am

Pretty sure signal is not proprietary

relan · January 15, 2021, 4:30pm

Pretty sure signal is not proprietary

Signal includes a lot of proprietary libraries:

github.com

signalapp/Signal-Android/blob/ff11609a823fc95bee9d438183a4ee95fe011ab2/app/build.gradle#L321


implementation 'androidx.lifecycle:lifecycle-common-java8:2.1.0'
implementation "androidx.camera:camera-core:1.0.0-beta11"
implementation "androidx.camera:camera-camera2:1.0.0-beta11"
implementation "androidx.camera:camera-lifecycle:1.0.0-beta11"
implementation "androidx.camera:camera-view:1.0.0-alpha18"
implementation "androidx.concurrent:concurrent-futures:1.0.0"
implementation "androidx.autofill:autofill:1.0.0"
implementation 'com.google.firebase:firebase-ml-vision:24.0.3'
implementation 'com.google.firebase:firebase-ml-vision-face-model:20.0.1'
implementation ('com.google.firebase:firebase-messaging:20.2.0') {
    exclude group: 'com.google.firebase', module: 'firebase-core'
    exclude group: 'com.google.firebase', module: 'firebase-analytics'
    exclude group: 'com.google.firebase', module: 'firebase-measurement-connector'
}
implementation 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-maps:16.1.0'
implementation 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-auth:16.0.1'
implementation 'com.google.android.exoplayer:exoplayer-core:2.9.1'
implementation 'com.google.android.exoplayer:exoplayer-ui:2.9.1'

Thus the app as a whole is proprietary.

MrBook · January 16, 2021, 4:12pm

You can get the website download which isn’t proprietary

SkewedZeppelin · January 16, 2021, 8:25pm

@MrBook

Signal always contains multiple proprietary libraries.
The only difference with the Web version vs the Play Store version is that it has its own app updater.
Signal uses the following proprietary libraries:

firebase-messaging for push notifications
play-services-maps for maps and sharing location
play-services-auth for performing reCaptcha checks during signup
firebase-ml-vision for face detection for the ‘Scribbles’ feature (?)

Please consider using XMPP/Conversations/Dino/Gajim, which can be a fully FOSS stack.
It doesn’t provide as much metadata protection, but it is trivial to run your own server (ejabberd/prosody) for yourself, your family, and your friends.