ProtonMail iOS app goes open source
protonmail.com
protonmail.com
They say on their Github page that their app is licensed under GPLv3. Yet they can't publish it under GPLv3 license to the apple store. This means that if you contribute to the project under the GPLv3 license, they can't redistribute your through the apple store. So if you contribute your code it will always have to be licensed under a permissive license.
Still can't wait for the F-Droid release though.
[1]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/blink-shell-mosh-ssh-client/id...
[2]: https://github.com/blinksh/blink/blob/raw/COPYING#L702
Edit: formatting, more context, and sources
People love to hate on Apple for "not allowing them to install apps on their devices freely, therefore they don't own the device" but in reality what Apple is doing is controlling the mass distribution channel and you can actually distribute your apps without Apple's approval with some inconveniences to the users.
More importantly, you can run your own code however you want so you don't have to trust 3.rd party apps.
I wish they had developer edition iPhones(I think they have but not easy to get one) where you can experiment more freely. This would win back quite a lot of goodwill since nerds don't care about licenses and such but want to tinker with things freely.
No, in the reality I know, Apple doesn't allow you to install apps on your device freely.
Or what did I miss?
So while it’s definitely not as “open” as, say, a PC or Android, it’s not as simple as, “no they don’t.”
Not sure what “does someone use that approach” mean. I can just say Apple for sure does not do any sort of banning of any kind if you use a handful of accounts with one device.
There’s probably people in the sideloading and jailbreak community who have a dozen accounts linked to one device. I’ve never thought of it as anything more than just doing some simple relatively innocent thing to get around the 3 limit. No problems to the at this point probably dozen accounts I have.
The binary needs to be signed off but Apple does not require a review to sign your binary, only to distribute it through App Store.
So to run your code you create an account, the free version has a shorter validity time frame I believe which means you will have to re-install the app once it ends, set up your signing profile on your developer tools and you are good to install and run any code you want.
You can have a torrent client or app that messes around with private API or whatever. Your code is signed locally, Apple wouldn't know what you are up to.
Apple needs to pay off the influencers to spread the word I guess :) At least, I think they need to take some effort to break the "greedy Apple corporation vs the generaous Google charity" narrative.
- The signing expires every 7 days, meaning re-install once a week. The app just crashes on launch when it expires.
- There's a (low) limit on the total number of apps you can have installed at one time via this method. I believe it's 5.
- The Apple ID you're using to codesign the app has to be signed in on the device to which you're installing. (I may misunderstand this one -- been a while since I've done it and it may have changed somehow -- but I'm pretty sure about it.) The implication here is that to share the app to anyone else, you also have to share your Apple ID.
- You're still beholden to Apple. They can revoke your Apple ID and thus your signing privilege pretty much any time for any reason.
They've restricted this avenue enough that I think it's fair to say it's not functional as more than a teaser, for people just checking out iOS development.
I would guess that what Apple wants to prevent is being undercut by another app distribution platform by making unauthorized app installation a pain. It is a choice that brings some advantages and disadvantages.
It is true that Apple might cancel the access to your device but I am find with that as long as Apple is not in a monopoly position. If A day comes and for some reason(like an US embargo?) Apple no longer can serve me, I would just move to the platform that serves me.
There's really nor reason to be paranoid over Apple's grip on the system. I am much more worried about Google cancelling my Gmail account and cutting me off from my digital presence.
Sure, it’s not a ‘native binary’, but for all kinds of utilities, both offline and online, that’s not really a problem.
Some big companies even use a web technology approach on purpose for a variety of reasons despite distributing through the app store. Slightly less ‘buttery’ feeling but generally not terrible.
false.
Well, obviously the more politically involved nerds would care and take fights about licenses on the internet but when was the last time a nerd check the license before satisfying his/her curiosity?
There is something to the saying that FOSS advocates are never satisfied. The alternative here isn’t a FOSS-distributed iOS app, it’s no iOS app at all.
You should put the blame on Apple for this, not on FOSS advocates.
>> You should put the blame on Apple for this, not on FOSS advocates.
It seems like an odd interjection to make at this point if Apple is the target. It’s well known that Apple’s store is proprietary and closed source, adding this comment to one of Proton’s news releases can’t help but come across as an implied criticism of Proton.
Or install onto a jailbroken device.
Analogy: Movie studio publishes a movie under Creative Commons. They can still use it however they want.
ProtonMail provides a lot of value for the small dollar amount per month! So happy to see the new mail beta, and now open source for the iOS app!
Very excited for protondrive now. Google Drive is usually fine but I never feel comfortable storing scans of IDs or tax documents there.
Also, I imagine they have little interest in complying with US LEO requests.
Presence of laws is compensated by absence of necessity to follow them.
No, I wouldn't trust anything stored there without encryption from my side.
The NSA has greater authority (and likely, capability) to collect every single bit in a Yandex server than it has in a Google one. And, of course, so does the FSB, the security service of something fairly close to an actual mafia-run state. So that one doesn't sound super-convincing. What are some others?
Edit: you added a bit of detail about the IRS after I replied, are you saying a yandex email makes it easier to evade taxes? That the advantage of such an email address is skirting or breaking laws and regulations?
Here's a real example. Aluminum extrudes are highly import taxed UNLESS they are are an integral product feature. Does the IRS get to see my emails on that, pre-emptively, before any presumption of doubt? Should they be able to poke a few search terms into an NSA database? Or is the burden on them to get a subpoena?
I see no weirdness that they can see my books but have no business in my conversations. Decades ago, they couldn't peer into meetings in a real-time, prior reasonable doubt way. 1984 and all.
The iron law of "You Are Going To Be Mossad'd Upon" applies.
If you aren’t paying for the product then you ARE the product.
That is a really weird way to think about it. For all I may know, google may be earning a million dollar by selling my data ... does not make the alternative product worth the money google is making for me to pay to avoid it.
I've been using it since it came out a week ago or so and am rather pleased.
Have you considered something like Mailbox.org instead? It's also privacy-focused, European-based, allows custom domains, and starts at 1€ / month without any yearly commitments. Also, no proprietary stuff and much less marketing crap.
* Mailbox.org has a per mailbox price that starts at EUR 1 per month
* Runbox has similar options
* Mailfence is another one, but I have no idea how easy it is to use for setting up the custom domain and mailboxes (last I checked quite sometime ago, the setup involved contacting them)
* Migadu has an "all you can eat" pricing that starts at USD 48 per year, with restrictions placed on how many emails you can send per day. For those who don't use email accounts to send a lot of mails, I don't think there's anything that can beat Migadu on price.
All the above providers are based out of Europe. All of them provide direct IMAP support (unlike ProtonMail where you have to use a bridge application).
For those who don't mind US based hosting, Mxroute is another provider that's slightly similar to Migadu on the hosting several mailboxes for a fixed price.
Also, it only seems like a simple task. You still have to manage notifications and UI for multiple accounts. Not to mention that I’d probably not do that free of charge.
ProtonMail can put this app on the store, because they own it and can relicense the App Store build at-will. But no one else owns ProtonMail's code, so we can't take it, give it an App Store-compatible license, and publish it.
Also, Can someone with more experience than me in licensing explain why we couldn't bundle up a fork of the app and release in on ios App store?
It's somewhat comparable to using Thunderbird (open source) to connect to GMail (proprietary). GMail might impose some restrictions regardless of the open source status of the client.
Edit: https://developer.apple.com/support/compare-memberships/ “ With just an Apple ID, you can access Xcode [. . .] and you can test your apps on devices”