Celebrating One Year of the Guardsquare Community

One year ago today, we launched the Guardsquare Community. Our intention was to create a place where members can openly showcase their mobile security expertise and visitors can benefit from the tips and tricks shared by ProGuard developers and members, all while enabling conversations around app protection and optimization.

In addition to this open environment where both engineers and users can gain insights into the rapidly evolving world of mobile app security, we wanted to provide our members with a centralized resource for ProGuard support and related open source and free tools.

From watching our members work together to solve security conundrums to recognizing how many members have helped our platform grow, the achievements over the past year have reinforced how important collaboration truly is within the mobile app development and security industries.

As we celebrate the first anniversary of the Guardsquare Community, we’re taking a look back at what the Community and members have achieved and sharing our plans for what’s to come.

What the Guardsquare Community Has Achieved

In the past year, we’ve seen significant growth in the Guardsquare Community, gaining several hundred active users to date. Additionally, there have been roughly 300 commits to ProGuard and ProGuardCORE combined thanks to our developers who are fully committed to supporting ProGuard while encouraging contributions from others.

Clearly, there is a benefit to open collaboration.

We also launched multiple forums for upcoming tools, visualizers, security scanners, and Guardsquare breaking news. The launch of these forums provided a more effective communication platform for those interested in and using our solutions and marked the first time there has been direct support offered for ProGuard users directly from those who help develop the tool. And the benefits of this support are clear: We have seen more than 80 community questions resolved since the launch with more and more submitted every day.

How Are People Using the Community? 

Following Guardsquare announcements, we’ve seen members leverage the community for help and support with:

• ProGuard
• ProGuard Playground
• AppSweep
• ProGuard Gradle plugin
• Early testing of new ProGuard versions with 6 beta releases

The launch of the Guardsquare Community has also provided us with an opportunity to increase collaboration initiatives. Some of our most recent efforts include:

• Contributions from the Gradle Enterprise team to the ProGuard Gradle Plugin making it much easier to use Gradle with ProGuard.
• Teaming up with author Frédéric Combes to translate a blog of his into English, covering the topic of Jar Optimization with ProGuard. 
• Working with the Firebase/Crashlytics team to improve conjoined support for their products with Guardsquare.
• Collaborating with the Razeware/Ray Wenderlich team and authors to highlight key takeaways from their book Real World Android. 

The Future of Our Community

As the Guardsquare Community continues to grow, we continue to strive to provide the best support and resources possible.

For example: To ensure Community members are always up-to-date on the latest updates on all things ProGuard, we are launching a ProGuard email alerts program. This program will ensure Community members are the first to know of any exciting and important updates about ProGuard, including release updates, beta releases for early access to new features, and other interesting news. Simply go to the community homepage and enter your email in the corner popup and you are set for all things ProGuard sent to your inbox!

Last, but not least, to thank you for your participation over the past year and further cultivate and nurture the growth of our platform, we are giving away more than 30 swag packages throughout October! For your opportunity to win a swag package, “Like” the giveaway announcement on the community forums.