Hi all,
Thanks everyone for the feedback so far. I am personally a bit nuanced on this. Platform policy advocacy is not something I would normally see as core to the mission of the XMPP Standards Foundation. At the same time, it is hard to ignore that Android openness has a real impact on client diversity, interoperability, and how viable XMPP deployments are in practice.
Based on the discussion on this list, my sense is that there is a fairly clear member-expressed mandate in favor of signing the letter. Given that, even if it is not something I would strongly push for myself, I would be fine with the XSF signing it in order to reflect that mandate.
Kind regards,
Guus
+1 from me, too
Am Mittwoch, 25. Februar 2026, 20:35:02 CET schrieb Mathieu Pasquet:
> Le 25 février 2026 09:17:08 GMT+01:00, Dan Caseley <dan@caseley.me.uk> a
écrit :
> >I don't believe that open source or software freedoms are a core part of
> >the XSF's mission.
> >
> >That being said, I think this is a good cause, I think there's a positive
> >for the XSF being aligned with all of those other signatories, and I can't
> >see any obvious downsides.
> >
> >+1
> >
> >Dan
> >
> >On Wed, 25 Feb 2026, 08:09 eevvoor via Members, <members@xmpp.org> wrote:
> >> Yes of course, agreeed.
> >>
> >> On 2/25/26 6:15 AM, Badri Sunderarajan via Members wrote:
> >> > Hello all,
> >> >
> >> > I agree with Travis and Gonzalo—it's quite clear to me that we should
> >> > sign this.
> >> >
> >> > I could go on a rant about Google but like Gonzalo I don't see any
> >> > reason to add anything further as the argument is quite self-evident.
> >> >
> >> > Best,
> >> > Badri
>
> I don't think the XSF has to be aligned on free software or open-source
> values, as evidenced by the number of members, sponsors, companies and
> community members that actually work on proprietary software.
>
> What the XSF does, however, is build an open standard in the commons in a
> way that gives as much freedom of choice as such a standard can give, and
> give visibility to the numerous options available, including the public
> federated XMPP network.
>
> In that perspective, google closing down the android ecosystem is directly
> detrimental to the availability of XMPP clients on android, by parties not
> vetted by them, or using other distribution mechanisms (not to mention the
> catastrophic upload/update review process as evidenced by the difficulties
> for XMPP android apps to state that they do not actually collect email
> addresses), proprietary or not. This seems in line with the XSF mission,
> and is not costing us anything that I can think of.
>
> +1 from me
>
> Mathieu