Is RCS an open standard? I’ve seen some people say it is and others it isn’t and now I’m very confused. Can you please give me a definitive answer?
Is RCS an open standard? I’ve seen some people say it is and others it isn’t and now I’m very confused. Can you please give me a definitive answer?
The confusion stems from the fact there no APIs in Android that let apps use RCS. Only Google can use it on Android and no other apps can use it. Anyone can make an SMS app. Only Google can make an RCS app.
It is an open standard, meaning you are free to create your own operating system for phones that implements RCS. But Google doesn’t let you use it on Android, so in practice it’s closed.
Plus, Google’s implementation of RCS adds extra features (like encryption) that aren’t part of the standard. So even if you create your own operating system that implements RCS, it will still be incompatible. So that’s another reason it’s not really open.
Yes and no.
You don’t need to make your own OS, but you do need to implement support for the RCS protocol within your app, rather than piggyback on Googles APIs.
I don’t like it, but there’s no legal requirement for google to provide those APIs, like they did with SMS etc.
https://github.com/Hirohumi/rust-rcs-client
Someone has written an open source RCS client prototype, but it has been only tested in China, where carriers do provide their own RCS servers as they are supposed. The author has not tested it with Google’s servers, which are probably blocked in China.
If you want to use SIM card based authentication, you need to have the app installed as a system app. That however is not an option for Google’s servers anyway, since they need to be able to work without carrier co-operation. Google uses SMS based authentication instead.
There does not necessarily need to be anything in Google’s servers that would reject non-Google RCS implementations: the SMS based authentication is defined in the spec, too.
Personally, I would not want the Google’s proprietary implementation to serve an API, but there to be a fully open source client instead.
you don’t just need to support the protocol, you need a server to communicate with your client, and Google is not here to federate its RCS service with Bob’s summer Github project.
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So what, if RCS becomes the standard I’m going to lose the ability to choose what messaging app I use? I very much don’t like that.
This seems to imply that you need a fork of Android, if you’re to build a messaging app that uses RCS.
But my understanding is what you really need is essentially an RCS server.
That seems incredibly dumb and backwards. I guess doing it this way helps them expedite its death like all their other products lol
There is an RCS test app, we could theoretically modify that, but I guess nobody has for some reason. I don’t particularly want people to use it, Matrix makes so much more sense.