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Not 100% on-topic since this is designed for ephemeral use but what is Signal's general stance towards forks on their server? I've considered switching to it but I don't like their official APK distributions.

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They don't tolerate third party clients. See: https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...

They can't; part of the premise of the project is that they come up with privacy advances that are deployed network-wide by controlling both the client and the server. See Matrix for an example of how hard it is to get very basic privacy controls up and running when you don't control the client.

(I always come across sounding like I'm dunking on Matrix; I like Matrix. Different project, different goals.)

I haven't seen any evidence to indicate that alternative clients are supported or even tolerated. I don't think Signal will start blocking custom clients, but I don't think the Signal project will aid or cooperate with any development of an alternative client.

> I don't think Signal will start blocking custom clients

Bridging Signal to Matrix has been notoriously difficult because Signal is actively hostile to all non-official clients.

So yeah. Open source, but no open values was gained from that.

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