The Signal Server repository hasn’t been updated since April 2020. There are a bunch of links about this here but I found this thread the most interesting.

To me, this is unforgivable behaviour. Signal always positioned themselves as “open source”, and the Server itself is under the best license for server software (AGPLv3 – which raises questions about the legality of this situation).

Signal’s whole approach to open source has constantly been underwhelming to say the least. Their budget-Apple attitude (secrecy, i.e. “we can never engage the community directly”, “we will never merge/accept PRs”, etc) has lead to its logical conclusion here, I guess. I have been somewhat of a “Signal apologist” thus far (I almost always defend them & I think a lot of criticism they get it very unfair) but yeah I’m over Signal now.

  • southerntofu
    4·
    4 years ago

    Yes iOS and Apple are incredibly user-hostile and developer-hostile:

    • you can’t install applications that are not approved by Apple, so obviously you can’t install a user-friendly app store like F-Droid (i say like because of course F-Droid is specifically for Android, but the fact is something like that cannot exist for iOS without jailbreaking your phone)
    • you can’t change your operating system (remove iOS)
    • Apple makes it pretty hard for users to interoperate with anything else, by requiring non-standard protocols everywhere (airplay, etc…) to the point where for years iTunes was (maybe still is?) the only way to interact with an iDevice
    • you can’t develop for iOS without an iOS device
    • you can’t develop for iOS without official, non-free Apple software
    • you can’t publish an application on iOS without an official Apple developer certificate
    • even if you got all this, you can’t push information to your users without going through Apple’s centralized push notification gateway (they actively suspend background network connections, so you can’t build anything useful on iOS)
    • you can’t tear apart your phone without specific tooling
    • you can’t even remove the battery without specific tooling (<-- seriously this is fucked up)
    • you can’t use a standard micro-USB/USB-C cable because Apple is the only brand going strongly against any form of standard
    • you can’t use a standard micro-jack cable for audio because Apple is the only brand going strongly against any form of standard

    Should i go on? Seriously if prisons were in fact designed to protect people not businesses, all Apple execs would be rotting in jail by now, along with the collaborating engineers who let that happen. To be clear, i don’t think prison is a solution for anything/anyone, just pointing out that the worst crime-doers in society are also those kept further away from prison.