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Comment by Caligatio | Hacker News Reader

The direction people refer to is the company making a few decisions that deviate from being 100% idealistic. Forget the fact that the client is open source, the parent company being a non-profit, and the app being ad-free. Instead, focus on delayed server source code releases, a weird US crypto currency thing, and the company not supporting private/standalone Signal networks. Oh, also, super concentrate on the client using phone numbers as if it's a fatal flaw rather than a design choice. Instead, keep using WhatsApp or Telegram which have way more problems (like being owned by Meta or having completely closed source server code).

Companies generally trying to do the right thing (e.g. Signal and Mozilla) are held to impossible standards. They are by no means perfect but they're leagues better than the alternatives.

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Disclaimer: I'm the founder.

I generally believe that for-profit, venture funded company, will some IP help in non-profit, has much better chances of delivering privacy preserving service.

Initially, in 2020, I thought that SimpleX Chat should be non-profit, but then after a long chat with Joseph Jacks in April 2020, who is evangelising VC investment in decentralized open-source tech for a long time, he both convinced me that 1) a dual model is better both for the users and for the scale of change that can be achieved 2) to make a dive into it - the idea at the time seemed too crazy to do something about it for real.

So here we are, with a for-profit company building a privacy-preserving communication network, that will have more than one provider by design.

> using phone numbers as if it's a fatal flaw rather than a design choice

It's not a "fatal flaw" - it's just a design choice that renders it useless for many use-cases.

They are held to the standards they set to themselves.

You can't brag about your open source server code and then stop updating it for a year.

You can't spend all day on twitter writing bullshit to attract a certain political demographic and then add a crypto wallet to a chat client.

etc etc

I really, really don't understand the obsession with the server source code. The client verifiably performs E2E encryption so who cares what the server does. Moreover, there is basically no way for external parties to verify what code is running on the servers. In the era of practically every free service selling out their users to the lowest bidder, it literally blows my mind the amount of hate Signal gets because of an old complaint about their server source (repo looks quite lively now).

The tech community is seriously guilty of letting perfect be the enemy of good.

For the record, I'm not a huge fan of the crypto wallet thing at all but I just don't use it.

>I really, really don't understand the obsession with the server source code.

You just used "closed server source code" as an argument against telegram? I also agree that it doesn't matter at all. But then why trashtalk telegram?

Telegram does not have solid E2E enabled by default, so it's more important what the server does.

> For the record, I'm not a huge fan of the crypto wallet thing at all but I just don't use it.

Why not, if it solves payments between Signal users (believe the Signal-MobileCoin integration, disregarding Moxie's involvement in both for a second, is a direct response to the now-defunct Libra/Deim)? Personally, I see MobileCoin / wallets as a genuine path to monetization for the Signal Foundation. Though, it remains to be seen if it is any successful.

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