RCS isn’t as open as SMS, it’s just as proprietary as iMessage, Google has just expressed a willingness to let other companies use it. They’re playing nice because they’re the underdog in the US market. If RCS becomes the new standard, Google will exploit that fact.
The EU are doing exactly that, but they’re doing it the sensible way. Instead of pointing to a particular standard (Signal, RCS, whatever) and saying you must use this, they’re forcing Apple, WhatsApp, etc to publish open APIs that allow others to hook into their services. This allows platforms that are distinctive to develop but prevents vendor lock-in. Honestly, I’ll be all over WhatsApp and iMessage once I can use an open-source client to hook into them.
Not yet, because as the article mentioned, Apple disputed their position on iMessage being a gatekeeper because “the userbase is really small”, so it’ll be a while before this is investigated and any conclusions are drawn.
They should. Absolutely. I think the ideal would be that the EU require Google to open up RCS to be interoperable with other standards like Matrix and Signal. But even barring that, requiring Apple to support RCS would be a massive improvement.
I just don’t want to accidentally give Google the power we’re trying to take from Apple. That just puts us back at square one.
Is there a RCS message app on F-Droid? I’m obviously not using Google messages, currently using Simple SMS messages, but wanted something with RCS.
RCS isn’t as open as SMS, it’s just as proprietary as iMessage, Google has just expressed a willingness to let other companies use it. They’re playing nice because they’re the underdog in the US market. If RCS becomes the new standard, Google will exploit that fact.
Shouldn’t the EU enforce an open standard, rather than one controlled by a ‘gatekeeper’?
The EU are doing exactly that, but they’re doing it the sensible way. Instead of pointing to a particular standard (Signal, RCS, whatever) and saying you must use this, they’re forcing Apple, WhatsApp, etc to publish open APIs that allow others to hook into their services. This allows platforms that are distinctive to develop but prevents vendor lock-in. Honestly, I’ll be all over WhatsApp and iMessage once I can use an open-source client to hook into them.
Does this mean we can get iMessage support on Android?
Not yet, because as the article mentioned, Apple disputed their position on iMessage being a gatekeeper because “the userbase is really small”, so it’ll be a while before this is investigated and any conclusions are drawn.
They should. Absolutely. I think the ideal would be that the EU require Google to open up RCS to be interoperable with other standards like Matrix and Signal. But even barring that, requiring Apple to support RCS would be a massive improvement.
I just don’t want to accidentally give Google the power we’re trying to take from Apple. That just puts us back at square one.
It’s more open in the sense that the GSMA (not Google) licenses it to pretty much anyone who wants it.
Apple does not license it to anyone and refuses to.
While its still proprietary, the fact that anyone CAN use it is a pretty huge difference than being 100% vendor-locked.