Is it really foss? - Where Projects are Evaluated To see if they're as free and open source as advertised

SkewedZeppelin · October 2, 2025, 7:34pm

this is false.
GMS is always two parts, one in app, and one in system.
Signal additionally uses other proprietary Google libs in addition to GMS:

github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android

app/build.gradle.kts

cf1afb739


      
          implementation(libs.firebase.messaging) {
            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(libs.google.play.services.maps)
          implementation(libs.google.play.services.auth)
          implementation(libs.google.signin)

They could technically instead use the client part of microG to make it truly FOSS, which would still interact with the proprietary system part on regular systems. Such was done by one of the German Covid apps years ago iirc.

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Is it really foss? - Where Projects are Evaluated To see if they're as free and open source as advertised

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