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Not only do researchers find that the success of the Corona warning app crucially depends on its acceptance. The increased acceptance was also one of the reasons why the decision for a decentralized solution was made early on, which should also be developed for greater transparency, open source. Whatever happens: the source code can be viewed on Github.
Without Google services
All the source code? Almost. There is still a small patch … The so-called “Exposure API” from Google (or Apple) is accessible for functionality. And their code is not open source. The application itself can currently only be obtained from the respective “official stores” of Google and Apple. Multiple requests to download APK file for Android, eg. B. to make available on Github were refused mainly for two reasons:
- The app wouldn’t work anyway without the pre-installed Google services (which hasn’t happened since the beginning of September, as microG now maps the Exposure API as well)
- RKI would not give approval for this
On the one hand, the RKI points out that everyone should install this app, but on the other, it doesn’t make it available to everyone: in particular, users of new Huawei devices keep looking down the drain. Likewise, those who do without the Google connection (including the Google account required to use the Play Store) to protect their privacy.
In a few days in F-Droid
So Marvin Wißfeld, the author of the microG framework, sat down again and in a few weeks he managed by himself what the big companies SAP and DTAG apparently failed to do despite government subsidies: he also has client libraries (i.e. those previously in the app itself required non-free Google components to address the API Exposure) as open source. And made available with a free license, of course. So that Google’s proprietary libraries can be replaced in a few steps as a so-called “drop-in replacement”.
The F-Droid community immediately took this opportunity to fork the app and just a few hours later created a fully open source functional app. This is currently still being tested internally, but should be available on F-Droid in a few days. And of course SAP / DTAG can also be converted for free to these open source libraries. The corresponding offer has already been made to them. But RKI will probably have to agree again.
(bme)
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