App breaking rule 4

[incendius679]

Hey, I noticed quit a lot of app breaking rule 4, that they should not contain proprietary elements, and rn, in one day, I noticed 3 apps (Session, Permission Pilot, and DeepL) that break that rule, and I wonder if it's a mistake, or if it's made on purpose.

[offa]

Thanks for bringing this up.

• Session indeed seems problematic, as even the F-Droid build appears to include proprietary dependencies now. This makes it a strong candidate for removal.
• Permission Pilot is available on F-Droid / Izzy, so should be FOSS. It does include some non-libre graphical assets (as noted in the F-Droid/Izzy anti-features), but these are less concerning.
• DeepL uses the DeepL service (obviously 😄), which is non-FOSS, but the app itself seems to be FOSS and is available on F-Droid.

The latter two should be fine, but Session is worth a closer look.

Does this match your observations?

[incendius679]

Yes, that's what I thought, but we should make the rule clearer, or at least put some kind of warning, a little bit like anti-features on F-Droid. By the way, maybe we should also make some kind of warnings about the security flaws of F-Droid, even though I love both the values of their project and yours.

[offa]

Session removed

(Where available), the anti features are already documented in detail on F-Droid and Izzy. I'm struggling to answer the question specifically regarding the Permission Pilot graphics.

By the way, maybe we should also make some kind of warnings about the security flaws of F-Droid, even though I love both the values of their project and yours.

I think security concerns should be discussed within the F-Droid project. Publicly shaming anyone would likely do more harm than good, and that should certainly not be the goal.

[shuvashish76]

Session indeed seems problematic, as even the F-Droid build appears to include proprietary dependencies now. This makes it a strong candidate for removal.

@offa It's NonFreeNet. To be clear F-droid has no NonFreeComp Anti-Feature, that's only available at IzzyOnDroid (see this thread) and as mentioned at contributing.md we don't allow such apps.

I think there are some confusions:

• NonFreeNet e.g. NewPipe and many such apps. (as promotes or entirely depends a non-Free network service i.e. youtube)
• NonFreeDep e.g. WhatsAppCleaner, (as it requires WhatsApp which is Non-Free Software in order to run, without WhatsApp the app is useless for the user)
• Non-Free Assets see this thread

So as I see there is no reason to remove any of the app.

https://f-droid.org/en/docs/Anti-Features/#:~:text=When,%20acceptable

F-Droid adds Anti-Feature for users' transparency they're not to punish upstream devs.

[offa]

Regarding Session: Even the F-Droid build configuration seems to include Firebase now.