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Under Meredith Whittaker, Signal Is Out to Prove Surveillance Capitalism Wrong (www.wired.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/technology

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Why isn't it on F-droid if it's FOSS?

That got me interested and apparently, they fear forks running out of date.

Concerning F-Droid, we already providing an auto-updating APK directly from our site, and we really don't want forked versions of the app maintained by other parties connecting to our servers. Not only could the users using the forked version have a subpar experience, but the people they're talking to (using official clients) could also have a subpar experience (for example, an official client could try to send a new kind of message that the fork, having fallen out of date, doesn't support). I know you say you'd advocate for a build expiry, but you know how things go. Of course you have our full support if you'd like to fork Signal, name it something else, and use your own servers.

While that statement got plenty of thumbs down, I hate to admit that F-Droid is indeed out of date quite often. I currently can't find a source for this but I once read this has something to do with their signing process.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Yes, they manually sign every package.

But they could easily have their own F-Droid repository, I have repositories for FUTO apps like Grayjay and their keyboard, Bitwarden, and Newpipe, among others. Those are run by the projects themselves, so they're in charge of how often they update it, as well as how they sign it. So if they have issues with the "official" F-Droid repositories, they can always host their own. I honestly prefer projects that host their own repos precisely because they should, in theory, update faster.

That said, a self-updating APK is good enough for me. However, I didn't see an install option easily listed on their website and had to search for "signal android apk" to find the page. It should be listed on the regular install page on their website, next to the link to Google Play. I found three separate pages for getting it for Android, and all three had a link to Google Play and only one had the APK.

[–] solrize 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Hmm, ok, thanks. But I'm kind of tired of version churn: who needs to keep changing a chat program? IRC has been around since the 1980s or so and still works fine.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

who needs to keep changing a chat program? IRC has been around since the 1980s or so and still works fine.

some people like texting their family who doesn't use IRC, and they'd rather not send messages in plain text for one reason or another.

[–] solrize 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

I get that IRC is old school and encryption is important. My question is why the program has to keep changing. If the task is simple enough, there shouldn't be incompatible changes required if there are new versions at all.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

With new possibilities due to new tech user demands rise, too. People asked for features like group or video chats or coupled devices (not trivial with E2EE) and since good companies listen, they developed those and still do.

Also, I don't think there's a single IRC client still in use that hasn't been updated since the 80s. I wouldn't be surprised if your favorite client got an update in the last couple of months - and that despite it being a trivial protocol.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

https://media.ccc.de/v/3e0a51f5-f60a-4a90-a78a-3a311c6ffe41 here the author explains why and it all sounds like a bucket of bullshit

[–] solrize 1 points 3 months ago

Thanks, I might try to watch some of that.