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Comment by greyface- | Hacker News Reader

It's been weeks since the initial TeleMessage revelation... has the Signal Foundation responded in any way to the news? They condemn open source third-party clients and threaten trademark litigation when people use the "Signal" name in interop projects. Meanwhile, total silence when a defense contractor does the same thing.

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The charitable answer is that organizations across US society are currently all trying to be very still and quiet and not do anything to provoke a vindictive assault by this administration.

The less charitable one is that Moxie was the opinionated and uncompromising core of the Signal Foundation and has been removed from the board and completely vanished from the public eye. What it stands for now is a touch less clear.

Meredith Whittaker seems kinda fearless though

Signal has done nothing wrong here. There's nothing they could meaningfully say that would do anything except draw heat from people looking for a scapegoat.

This mess is entirely the fault of Telemessage and the people who chose to use it for top-secret comms.

Remember Signal FOSS fork that got cease and desisted?

How is Molly doing these days? Is there an alternative server you could selfhost?

I recall Whittaker talking about it in an interview, mainly complaining about how mainstream media kept referring to Signal as an "insecure messenger" when that was not at all the issue. Can't seem to find that interview now, though.

Probably not much they could do, because I'm sure that's why TeleMessage didn't call their app "Signal", but "SGNL".

I'm annoyed by moxie vs fdroid as the next guy, but this is way above his desire to make a buck from his honest work.

this is about an overseas elite who profited from US war aid for decades holding the US presidency by the balls, and everyone think this is just incopetence.

think for a second, if any other administration was using a telephone or a communication software made by a never heard before company overseas, would you think it was just incompetence? why these traitors clowns get a pass?

> if any other administration was using a telephone or a communication software made by a never heard before company overseas, would you think it was just incompetence?

One interesting thing I saw in the original article was that the US was using TeleMessage since February 2023. If that's true, it means we have two administrations who are responsible for this choice.

very true, but i don't imagine the previous administration was discussing tactical plans on said modified client

Protecting your name is perfectly fine. You're allowed to make a fork of Firefox, you just can't call it Firefox or use any of Mozilla's branding. You're allowed to fork the open source part of VS Code, you just can't call it that or use Microsoft's branding. etc. etc. - you're free to do with open source whatever the license allows, but you're not allowed to use the original name or branding because you have zero rights to those unless the license explicitly stipulates how the name may be used by forks (like how tons of folks use the "Linux" name, and all of them do so with explicit written permission from the Linux foundation, as they own that name as a trademark)

That's not the issue here. VSCode and FireFox are false equivalents. Even if you'd rebrand the fork, Signal forbids non-official clients/builds from connecting to their servers. Enforcement has been selective but the last official word AFAIK is that you are not allowed to fork, rebrand, and distribute a client which alllows you to chat with Signal users.

Mozilla still allows you to install and download add-ons and use other Mozilla services like VPN and Relay from your LibreWolf build.

Two wrote a two-part complaint, one part about clients, and the other part about Signal going after people using the Signal name. My comment was only about that second part (hence why it starts the way it starts).

You're making me wonder if Signal is the customer of the third party and not the government.

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