Some relevant background information on this issue:
Making Signal open source is not enough; now they want to constrain Moxie in doing something he doesn’t want to do. As predicted by Tocqueville, this is the moment when the desire for equality gets in the way of liberty.
Also it saddens me that LibreSignal is effectively dead now, along with any future third-party clients. I think forking the Signal server and (later) adding federation could spark a community of free and secure messenger apps for the 21st century.
Even if that means starting with an empty user base. After all, most of my contacts with Signal only ever use it to contact me, it wouldn't be difficult to convince them to change app.
I don't understand why Guardian were denied permission to use the code. Sure, OWS aren't under any obligation to, but it doesn't really feel like it's in the spirit of openness at all.
The code might be 'open source', but it's neither free as in user freedom or beer, unless you're giving Facebook or Google your metadata now.
If the code can't be reused, it's pretty hard for users to move to something else. Unless that something else is totally starting over again from scratch.
It just feels weird that because of the Apple situation, in this case the GPL appears to work directly against user freedom.
I think a lot of people have been taken by surprise by that, to discover the platform is not what they thought it was.