I host pretty much everything myself but I am not about trying to teach every person i want to talk with to not only download a new app but then walk them through how it works.
Signal is truly some awesome tech and I don’t understand the hate.
Matrix doesn't have "terrible UX". The client you chose had. Pick another one. You don't have that choice with Signal.
Try:
Oh, and joining large rooms can still take hours.
That sounds like a feature to me.
Please explain.
1. it is not free software 2. you cannot use your own clients/server 3. you are tied to your mobile number 4. it is not able to communicate with other networks 5. people shilling for signal do not understand that it is currently just whatsapp but not owned by facebook/meta. who knows if that could change just like whatsapp changed.
and maybe more but this is the jist of it...
i do understand matrix by default has a learning curve but there are dozens of clients that cater to a variety of users. you can pick and choose whatever you like, all you have to do is some experimenting
What are you talking about?
https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/blob/master/LICE...
https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/blob/master/LICENSE
https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server/blob/master/LICEN...
oh, also the github repo last i heard was very far behind in commits from their internal live branches. they push to github as an afterthought
The company owns the code copyright, so they can choose to release any part of the code they wish; they can delay as much as they want.
You never had the right to submit bug fixes to the original project. Open source is about source code, not about having a responsive community.
what benefit do you get from "centralization" of signal at the hands of moxie that you cant get from a decentralized nature of matrix which is similar to what we call today as "Email"?
sure, that is why i said "complying with open source" but at the same time not being free software. sure its not actively hostile towards users like whatsapp is but it isnt much better anyways. i m not asking for a right to submit bug fixes. the reason i am sticking to that is because they grant me that right and for me, that is a big deal. the whole concept of "free software" is about the community helping each other to build software that can solve problems, not comply with the letter of the license and sticking with that.
>The company owns the code copyright, so they can choose to release any part of the code they wish; they can delay as much as they want.
so tomorrow there is a severe flaw found in the code of the app or the server and the company can decide to wait it out and internally fix the issue after a long time without users knowing about it and then they release the fix as a normal thing, sure they have every "right" to do that but is it really fitting to what we today associate with free software community? imagine that with say the linux kernel. people would sit on zero day bugs with fixes just because they "own" the copyright.
Because it has different objectives?
> what benefit do you get from "centralization" of signal at the hands of moxie that you cant get from a decentralized nature of matrix which is similar to what we call today as "Email"?
If this is actually a good faith question (despite the overwhelming amount that's been written by a lot of people explaining exactly this point), I suggest you stop and think about what the answer might be. Then maybe go and read what Moxie (and others) have written setting out their values and why they chose a particular direction. You don't have to agree with it, but consider that others do.
> the whole concept of "free software" is about the community helping each other to build software that can solve problems, not comply with the letter of the license and sticking with that.
No, "Free Software" is about ensuring the end-user's freedoms (see Stallman etc.). The signal client and servers are both open source and free - if you want to take apart, modify and run your own instances of them, you're free to do so. The restrictions that Signal likes to impose is about connecting to their instance of a service. This has nothing to do with Free Software.
> so tomorrow there is a severe flaw found in the code of the app or the server and the company can decide to wait it out and internally fix the issue after a long time without users knowing about it and then they release the fix as a normal thing, sure they have every "right" to do that but is it really fitting to what we today associate with free software community? imagine that with say the linux kernel. people would sit on zero day bugs with fixes just because they "own" the copyright.
This is literally how modern software development works for most large projects. Open source doesn't grant you the right to view every single commit that eventually makes it into the tree at the point that it is created.
As soon as they find out that a feature is lacking in Signal, they will just revert to the previous messenger that they were using.
> Signal is truly some awesome tech and I don’t understand the hate.
At least Element/Matrix is decentralized and is not just deployed on Google's Cloud as a centralized server and also doesn't have a untraceable ponzi cryptocurrency called MobileCoin as a feature that allows dark-net criminals, terrorists and extremists to fund their activities on a private blockchain.
Now I can see why Signal is so attractive to dark-net criminals and extremists, but it doesn't matter since the only way to stop them making those private transactions so easily on Signal is for Google to take down Signal's GCP instance.
Signal has a frustratingly terrible client that I curse every day.
But, I can sort of live with that.
The big problem with Signal is that it has a proprietary client with no supported alternatives. The other fundamental problem with Signal is that it requires a phone number registration. I did it because I only use Signal to chat with some friends, but if I had to use something for truly private communication there is no way I would ever tie identity to a phone number.
This is a confusion of terms. Privacy doesn't entail anonymity. Having a private conversation means exactly what Signal is offering: peer to peer encrypted communication. What you are referring to is a secret conversation.
Signal is awesome as a replacement for SMS and any messenger using telephone number as ID.
I don't understand.
1. Messengers exist.
2. Isn't the SMS App not a messenger as well? What about Email? SMS style messaging can be implemented via Matrix as well.
I am just confused by this comment. I just want to keep my phone number private
So the normal case for a ringing phone was that you had no idea who was calling or any way to get the number. Those capabilities came later.
You'd look up someones phone number in the white pages and anonymously called them. Which of course was a source of much entertainment for us kids of the 70s and 80s.
Now, of course, the phone company knew both numbers, so there wasn't any privacy in that sense.
Molly on Android
I also use signal-cli, so I know some of these work, but it's not something I'd rely on for anything important since it can be squashed at any point on a whim.