Captain Beyond

Supposedly the version on Github releases doesn’t have the Google libraries.

https://github.com/eszdman/PhotonCamera/issues/109

Still, I would wait until this app is in F-Droid before considering it. It includes some other libraries of unknown source.

https://github.com/eszdman/PhotonCamera/issues/46

This - cathedral style development absolutely is a valid way to create free software and I don’t believe Eric S. Raymond (the guy who, I believe, coined the term) claimed otherwise, only that the bazaar model was “better.” Maintaining a bazaar style project is work, and it’s work that easily leads to burnout. We should normalize the idea that you don’t need to commit to being an “open source maintainer” to release a free software project; it should be enough to just release the source code (with or without binaries).

It should be noted that this is not the source code to the application itself, but rather a backend server used by the application. The application proper remains under a free software license.

However, the fact that this server (which as far as I know is a required dependency of the application) was kept secret (albeit under a free software license) is troubling, and I don’t understand how Alexander can justify removing this license given he is not the sole contributor to this repository. It’s also strange that he reprimanded Roman for “making decisions alone” when the decision to remove the license was made by Alexander alone.

Why does it need to be proprietary?

From my point of view switching from a proprietary application to a free application is always a gain. You can’t control what other people use, but you can take steps to reclaim your own freedom and control.

It’s unfortunate there’s no way to use RCS from a free application, though.

But they told me I can just not connect it to the internet and it’ll be just like any dumb device.

Eventually these things will come with modems built in so you can’t even do that.

I feel like there’s a lot of FUD around this subject, because people bring it up as if it’s purely a negative without talking about the reasons why it’s done the way it is. The whole point of F-Droid is that it’s a repository (not a store) of free software applications. They have an inclusion policy forbidding proprietary code and dependencies, and in order to enforce this policy they have to build from publicly available source code, and in order to do so they need to sign the builds themselves. This means, yes, you are trusting F-Droid instead of the upstream developer - but given F-Droid has higher standards than upstream developers this is a tradeoff I am willing to make.

Reproducible builds solves this in a way that preserves the standards of F-Droid, however, “security peoples’” favored “alternatives” (such as Accrescent, Obtainium, and Google Play Store/Aurora Store) forego this entirely, showing they don’t either have a viable solution to offer or that they don’t really care about the problem that F-Droid is addressing to begin with.