The whole iMessage/RCS conversation is really only relevant in the US; in other countries basically everyone uses WhatsApp or Kakao or LINE or whatever the local favorite is. In the US, there is no industry-standard RCS. It’s theoretically a carrier-based messaging service but all of the carriers outsourced it to Google so, as an alternative to iMessage, the option is a proprietary extension of RCS running on Google servers, something that is exactly as open as iMessage itself.
If you want a true industry standard way to send messages to people, the iPhone has had that since 2007: email.
RCS the open standard is missing critical features. Google’s implementation fixes that, but is not open. I don’t think we should give a pass to RCS just because it’s open. SMS is a legacy format but it’s unconscionable these days to release a new messaging platform without E2E encryption. That’s a minimum viable product feature, not a maybe nice to have in the future feature.
It might be owned by someone else, but google is the only one pushing it and the only one supporting it. Technically it’s open, but it’s googles standard.
Does anything outside of Google use this standard? I haven’t even heard of open source apps that use it. The only major player backing it is google. It’s their standard, just like iMessage is apples.
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The whole iMessage/RCS conversation is really only relevant in the US; in other countries basically everyone uses WhatsApp or Kakao or LINE or whatever the local favorite is. In the US, there is no industry-standard RCS. It’s theoretically a carrier-based messaging service but all of the carriers outsourced it to Google so, as an alternative to iMessage, the option is a proprietary extension of RCS running on Google servers, something that is exactly as open as iMessage itself.
If you want a true industry standard way to send messages to people, the iPhone has had that since 2007: email.
Email requires a costly data plan however, a big disadvantage to SMS based messaging.
I think it’s still very relevant to everyone else. An open standard is better than a closed system like WhatsApp.
One day we’ll wonder why we let so much get tangled up in single companies. You’d think Twitter would wake people up.
RCS the open standard is missing critical features. Google’s implementation fixes that, but is not open. I don’t think we should give a pass to RCS just because it’s open. SMS is a legacy format but it’s unconscionable these days to release a new messaging platform without E2E encryption. That’s a minimum viable product feature, not a maybe nice to have in the future feature.
Is there any open source SMS app that supports RCS right now?
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It might be owned by someone else, but google is the only one pushing it and the only one supporting it. Technically it’s open, but it’s googles standard.
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Does anything outside of Google use this standard? I haven’t even heard of open source apps that use it. The only major player backing it is google. It’s their standard, just like iMessage is apples.