stop excluding users who don't chronically upgrade their phones (environmental ethical issue)

[bruceleerabbit]

Describe the bug F-Droid only distributes the last three versions of Wireapp, and all of them require Android OS 7.0. Android phones are not like linux deskops-- users cannot simply upgrade their OS unless the manufacturer independantly releases a new OS (this is very rare; most phone makers abandon their users after 1 OS upgrade and generally it's just a minor version update).

Every time Wireapp increases the AOS version requirement, users are forced to buy a new phone (hardware!). There are a lot of ethical problems with that. Old phones end up in the trash (along with batteries that still have lots of life on them). New phones have a carbon footprint. Labor conditions are bad for those mining for rare earth metals. Every phone purchase yields more profit for an unethical corporation (including but not limited to Google).

A user of a ~5-6 year old phone should not be forced to buy new hardware in order to overcome a serious Wire bug like dropped msgs (https://github.com/wireapp/wire-android/issues/1101)

At the same time, the desktop wireapp has fallen behind to the point of disrepair:

https://github.com/wireapp/wire-desktop/issues/5270

So Wire devs are failing to keep up with changes in the desktop domain, and then needlessly excluding phone users due to excessive upgrading that forces hardware upgrades. This is an inversion of what should happen with good engineering practices. Perhaps the Wire desktop developers should switch places with the Wire Android devs. Upgrade ambition is healthy & constructive on a desktop where users can upgrade their software at will, but upgrade ambition is deconstructive & harmful inside Google’s walled garden of corporate control.