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.

TheLastProject · January 20, 2021, 7:34pm

Also important to mention: the Signal developers are against it being distributed through F-Droid. There’s a very long discussion about that here: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/7505

Tyrell.Wellick · January 21, 2021, 6:17am

What are the main reasons given by the signal developers please?

tw-hx · January 21, 2021, 9:41pm

As to why they like centralisation, look up Moxie’s blog post or talk:

I have a Signal-FOSS fork as well, similar to Molly FOSS’s build, which removes the proprietary Google blobs linked above:

Still early, no F-Droid repo yet. I linked in the FAQ to the issue in which Signal’s devs explained why they don’t want it degoogled or on F-Droid as well.

jerry99 · March 10, 2021, 10:20am

As far as I know, the programmer uses functions only provided by google (Signal uses GCM for push messaging) and dont wants to have them replaced by a substitute.
So you will never ever have signal without Google.
As for me: better no google and no signal, but Telegram instead without Google

Morgoth · March 10, 2021, 6:06pm

Signal has its own push notifications if Gapps/MicroG is not installed. There’s Signal without Google, just above is posted the TwinHelix fork.

but Telegram instead without Google

Yeah, Telegram… its encryption is not officially audited, only secret chats are E2EE encrypted, voice calls are not E2EE encrypted, the official app has Google trackers and the server is not open source.

TheLastProject · March 10, 2021, 7:07pm

If you want something without non-free dependencies that is E2E everywhere, look into Element. Group chats aren’t E2E by default yet but you can easily enable it. One of one chats already do use E2E.