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

General
21

I don’t understand why there is so much confusion here.
This has nothing to do with Firebase, there are like 5 total proprietary libraries being pulled in here, which can and do work regardless of using FCM or if GMS is available on the system.
We know this is the case because their ads library and crash reporting library both work regardless of GMS on system.
Signal for Android with these libraries as is, is not and has not been FOSS since the beginning.
That is it.
That is why it is listed on a website called “isitreallyfoss.com”.
I swear I’ve had this exact conversation at least a dozen times over the years.
You can’t say it is FOSS, as long as it has proprietary libraries: it is not FOSS.

I really don’t care to discuss this any further.
I’ve made the facts clear and Signal has bigger issues such as being a silo or relying on phone numbers or lack of true multi-device support, which is why I’ve never recommended it.

6 Likes
22

That’s true, using even a single proprietary library makes your binaries no longer open source. My last comment was only about firebase-messaging

23

This is such a good project. It reminds me of ToS;DR. These are projects that are not necessarily exclusive to digital privacy, but they help.

2 Likes
24

Molly-FOSS should solve this, no? GitHub - mollyim/mollyim-android: Enhanced and security-focused fork of Signal.

2 Likes
25

yes, the client side bit
the server is still proprietary

4 Likes
26

It’s definitely not FOSS but I would argue it’s still open-source.

27

I said something similar but apparently they don’t see the difference nor care to expand on it with specificity on this point atleast for all to understand beyond what they have already been saying

28

If you or I want to claim Signal is open-source, that is fine and appropriate.
The issue is that Signal portrays themself as FOSS when they aren’t, which leads to users believing it is FOSS.

6 Likes