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.

  • ssenecaOP
    81·
    4 years ago

    It’s not about instances, they’re pretty much equal in that regard. There are two main issues with XMPP:

    1. Clients. There is no “default” or “reference” client for XMPP, whereas there is a cross-platform one for Matrix (in the form of Element). This has several implications, but the most important is that for the non-technically aware (which is the vast majority of people I talk to), it is easier and reassuring to use “the” Matrix client. The more important implication to me is on e2ee. Conversations started in Element now enable e2ee by default. In contrast, every XMPP client I’ve tried (on Linux & iOS) does not.
    2. Message history. Matrix and XMPP differ a lot here, and it’s why the Matrix homeservers are much more resource hungry than XMPP servers. When I use Matrix, I get message history on each device. This is a critical feature for those I want to move from Whatsapp and the like. This is not the case with XMPP.
      • ssenecaOP
        3·
        4 years ago

        You say you disagree with the default clients idea, but why?

        At most it is a branding/marketing problem

        I don’t know why you’re so dismissive of this issue. I feel like you’re framing me as if I’m anti-XMPP when that isn’t the case; on the contrary I use XMPP and am a Prosody server admin. The reality of the situation though, like I’ve said above, is that next to nobody uses XMPP, even in tech communities. At this point “branding/marketing” could end up being the be-all and end-all of the entire protocol.

        As for the other two points: that is both false and outdated.

        You’ve misinterpreted my comment. I am very well aware XMPP has and has had e2ee support, the issue is that XMPP clients never have this switched on by default, in my experience (which was testing every XMPP iOS client there is, the platform most my friends use).