I think that is a good thing, kudos to them.
The thing that would make me really happy is a play-framework-free build on f-droid. I'm not holding my breath, though...
f-droid would be nice, I agree. I did not really follow the whole political discussion about why moxie refuses to cooperate, but at least I can use signal again after some years without gapps.
F-Droid offers two options (a) they build your app, or (b) you use reproducible builds, they rebuild your app, and verify that it produces the same result.
Moxie raged that people should trust him instead of F-Droid for builds, so (a) wouldn’t be an option, and was awfully silent about (b), especially considering that Signal now has reproducible builds, but he refuses to allow that option, too.
Do you mean "signal"? Telegram is very specifically the pseudo-secure messenger shit-talking Signal and Marlinspike.
m(