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by ptero 1990 days ago
Can someone provide a short technical summary for folks, like me, not closely tracking libre signal, F-droid, etc.? I get the freedom arguments, but what is the technical crux of the issue?

Did a reimplementation (competitor?) of signal without nonfree dependencies get removed from google store? If so, why? Etc.
2 comments
marcinzm 1990 days ago
The founder of Signal did not like them:

a) Using the Signal backend infrastructure which Signal pays for

b) Using the Signal name which I'm guessing Signal has a trademark for

link
nebulous1 1990 days ago
my recollection:

Signal uses Google cloud messaging to wake up the phone when the server receives a message for the user. The message itself does not go through GCM. It does this because GCM was (is?) the only way to reliably wake up the phone on a push notification.

Libresignal removed GCM and used websockets for this wakeup message (?).

OpenWhisper didn't want them to use the Signal servers or the name Signal.

link