Yes Signal is both open source and E2EE, but it’s still a closed centralized platform. You could spin it up yourself of course, but it wouldn’t be able to interact with others spinned up in any way, which is why everyone just uses the “official” Signal servers and applications.
Matrix is an open standard protocol like IRC or XMPP which is E2EE by default. Anybody can integrate Matrix into their software (varying levels of difficulty) and it will be able to communicate with all other Matrix software.
In fact Signal vs instant-messaging software which utilize Matrix is almost exactly analagous to Reddit vs Lemmy, if Reddit were still open source…
I thought it was open source, no?
Yes Signal is both open source and E2EE, but it’s still a closed centralized platform. You could spin it up yourself of course, but it wouldn’t be able to interact with others spinned up in any way, which is why everyone just uses the “official” Signal servers and applications.
Matrix is an open standard protocol like IRC or XMPP which is E2EE by default. Anybody can integrate Matrix into their software (varying levels of difficulty) and it will be able to communicate with all other Matrix software.
In fact Signal vs instant-messaging software which utilize Matrix is almost exactly analagous to Reddit vs Lemmy, if Reddit were still open source…
my bad, yes you can run your own. most just signup for what others are running.
I know there is a open source fork called molly.