Hans-Christoph Steiner @eighthave@librem.one

Looks like the latest release of #FDroid, v1.17.0, does not get flagged by #Google, at least in the #Android 14 emulator. I heard some reports that v1.16.4 also isn't flagged. I don't really know why its flagging F-Droid then. v1.16.4 has an unchanged #targetSdkVersion, but v1.17.0 has it bumped to 28. I have found no way to get info on why they are flagging the app, just this silly "unsafe" warning screen. Is F-Droid being flagged by Google Play Protect on your devices? Please let me know.

On the other hand, #MLS includes "Group Integrity", which means that all members in a group see the same state. This means all members see the same list of members, same message transcript, same message order, etc. #Signal Protocol does not guarantee Group Integrity. I think this is an important property, but I wonder how much this was actually abused in the real world with other protocols? 3/

One big concern I have about #MLS over something like #Signal Protocol is that it makes it so the cost of sending a message to a group of 10 is about the same as sending to a group of 1000 or more. This is the opposite of how physical social interaction works, it is much more effort to speak in front of large groups. This gives advantage to spam, disinfo, trolling, etc. as compared to protocols where the cost linearly increases as the number of users in the group increases. 2/

#MLS Messaging Layer Security has just been officially standardized by the #IETF, this is a great new development, especially in combination with standard protocols like #Matrix and #XMPP. https://blog.phnx.im/rfc-9420-mls/ 1/

@danb @webmink @fdroidorg We have some automated scans for license changes, but we always appreciate when people let us know when they see something. We have a harder problem than say Debian since #Android apps are basically all built using dependencies from #MavenCentral, which doesn't enforce that things published there are #FLOSS. https://f-droid.org/2022/07/22/maven-central.html

#CriticalMass #Vienna heat map of paths taken since 2011.

@danb @webmink @fdroidorg By "drops out", do you mean like if an app adds a proprietary lib? In that case, we've handled that many times. We also have handled many cases of changing Anti-Features on existing apps. We generally engage with upstream in these cases, and work through the issue. Many upstreams are thankful because we caught something they didn't know was happening. Occasionally, upstreams are very grumpy about it, and even demand their app is removed from f-droid.org.

After mostly living off grants I wrote or helped write for a decade, it still feels like a gamble whenever I submit a proposal. I guess the key is to submit many, and find an acceptable failure rate. It still sucks to put a bunch of work into something, then it is just rejected.📝 💥💨

@webmink @fdroidorg thanks again for the discussion! Interesting to hear it framed as a "lifestyle movement", I guess that is a sign that I need to lighten up a bit about free software ;-) But really, that's a key point: people really want ethical tech, and they choose it whenever they can. It is our job when building the tech to make things that don't compromise our own values. Then the users will come. And the software has to really fulfill needs, it is not enough just to be #FreeSoftware

For all those saying "#Mastodon has failed" or something like that, consider that #Threads usage has already fallen by half, and that is with all the #Facebook money behind it. https://www.similarweb.com/blog/insights/social-media-news/threads-week/

@gwagner as far as I know, spying on foreigners is not illegal in Austria. Seems ok to me as a method to make sure the big powers don't want to attack us. Or at least it is better than #Austria joining #NATO or some other military pact.

@stevenroose oh yeah, we're there already in #Vienna. We're ahead of the curve, the climate has already changed. It is more and more Mediterranean. There are farmers growing olives and lavender in Austria now.