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Signals existence was too inconvenient for oppressive governments/law enforcement, so instead they've been subverted.



https://getsession.org/

* Doesn't require users to provide a phone number.

* Doesn't use centralized servers.

Hopefully Session will stay legit for a while. Just when I get most of my contacts to use Signal, Signal moves to embed a cryptocurrency in the app and starts pushing Storytime.

https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/signal.html


F-Droid list them as having anti-features "the upstream source code is not entirely free" - how are we supposed to know if it does what it says it does if it's proprietary?


That appears to be because Session uses Firebase as a dependency.

https://github.com/opendocument-app/OpenDocument.droid/issue...

Per F-Droid's definition of "the upstream source code is not entirely free":

https://f-droid.org/en/docs/Anti-Features/#UpstreamNonFree

This seems to be a case of "damned if you do; damned if you don't". Session relies on Firebase to get faster notifications from Google servers. This can be disabled in the applications preferences but changes the behavior from push-notifications to polling Session's decentralized messaging network, which makes messages notifications slower.

https://getsession.org/faq#push-notifications

For the sake of clarity it would be nice if instead of making such a vague pronouncement, F-Droid would specify precisely what about the upstream source code is not entirely free.

https://forum.f-droid.org/t/the-upstream-source-code-is-not-...




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