this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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While Google is a major pusher of RCS, the standard is owned by GSMA. The entire standard is also published and freely available. Furthermore, RCS messages are not required to use Google's Jibe platform; other companies are free to use their own. For example, many EU carriers do not use Jibe servers. Not all RCS messages go through Google servers. Technically the standard is even open enough to use individually, but you will realistically run into road blocks setting it up yourself. In any case, please stop regurgitating this nonsense.
https://source.android.com/static/docs/core/connect/ims_single_registration_v1_1_1.pdf
https://www.gsma.com/futurenetworks/rcs/universal-profile/
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14Ns9oV0Dh8_S5M-JHDvJ8sNHR6rpbiq2N6qZlP3g9zQ/
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.
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?
None that I know of, but you can attempt to make one yourself. However, if you do try to integrate directly to Jibe or another existing RCS platform, you will likely be severely limited in scope and performance (hence the road blocks I mentioned). You could circumvent this problem by hosting your own servers.
https://www.gsma.com/newsroom/wp-content/uploads//RCC.14-v8.0-5.pdf
https://www.gsma.com/futurenetworks/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/RCC.07-v11.0.pdf
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.
That is quite a leap of logic, but again, I'll reiterate that Google is not the only one pushing and supporting the RCS standard. Many members of the GSMA have a vested interest in RCS and its adoption. Just because Google is the "biggest name" behind that interest doesn't make RCS "Google's 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.