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And another response from another person who worked on a federated protocol (Daniel Gultsch, the main developer of the Conversations XMPP client): https://gult

And another response from another person who worked on a federated protocol (Daniel Gultsch, the main developer of the Conversations XMPP client): https://gultsch.de/objection.html https://gultsch.de/objection.html

tptacek 5y ago
It feels like the steady march of time has convincingly refuted this objection.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  I would say it's Marlinspike's position that has aged badly. Despite the supposed innovation benefits of centralised control, Signal still requires phone numbers, and its main "innovation" has been adding a pump-and-dump crypto-coin, which users are forced to have the code for in their clients whether they want it or not, because he refuses to allow non-official clients to connect to Signal's servers. In fact he even objects to people installing the official client from F-Droid.[0] So it seems that in his mind, progress is "whatever direction I decide", and what we call freedom is what he would call "dangerous fracturing of my ecosystem". [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/fdroid/comments/q1jnbb/why_isnt_signal_at_fdroid/ https://old.reddit.com/r/fdroid/comments/q1jnbb/why_isnt_sig...
  - hiq 5y ago
    What do your points have to do with the centralized nature of Signal, or the drawbacks of federated networks pointed out by the article?
    - skinkestek 5y ago
      If Signals direction was so much better they should have come a lot further since they have an easier task (and are better funded) than their main competitors (XMPP and Matrix). Instead many feel Signal has moved in a wrong direction with crypto currency.
      - hiq 5y ago
        You're just saying that Signal's priorities don't align with those of some people, but the point of the article is that, given certain priorities, they'll be more easily fulfilled if your system is centralized, nothing else. Whether these priorities are the "right" ones is orthogonal to the debate about decentralized vs federated architures.
  - tptacek 5y ago
    Your "freedom" has in fact nothing to do with the project Signal is working on, and the fact that you want to sysadmin your phone, something only a tiny fraction of the world's population has or ever will have any interest in doing, has nothing to do with whether Signal is meeting its objectives. By all means, use Matrix.
    - dane-pgp 5y ago
      I don't want to sysadmin my phone, I just want to remove Google from my threat model. That means I'd like everyone to be able to buy phones which come pre-installed with F-Droid as an alternative app store, so people get the benefit of reproducible builds of free software apps (ideally with binary transparency, and verifiers in multiple jurisdictions). Reliance on Google as a third party is just another example of the blind-spot that Marlinkspike has about the dangers of centralisation. This is seen in his resistance to making Signal work on devices that don't use the proprietary Google Play services[0], and the slowly boiling frog of developers no longer having control of their own keys when publishing in the Google Play store.[1] [0] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/5450 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/5450 [1] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/01/android_app_bundle/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/01/android_app_bundle/
      - hiq 5y ago
        This is an issue from 2016, it's 2022 now and Signal works perfectly fine without Google Play Services. The .apk is there if you don't want to use Google Play Store: https://signal.org/android/apk/ https://signal.org/android/apk/ and it prompts for updates when they're available.
        dane-pgp 5y ago
        Thank you for adding that context, which I should have included in my comment. I still think the issue from 2016 is worth reading, as the issue was closed on the basis of being a duplicate, but as a commenter on the issue points out: > Because all the refernced duplicate discussion threads trying to solve this are locked (why?), I'm raising my voice for this here. This is indicative of a project which not only resisted supporting users without Google Play services, but also resisted people questioning their decision. Two days after that plea, without any further explanation: > @signalapp locked and limited conversation to collaborators Of course an issue tracker isn't a discussion forum, but a good project team would have taken an extra couple of seconds to point issue reporters and commenters to an FAQ answer (assuming they had an answer that would withstand scrutiny). Anyway, my point is that despite the supposed merits of centralisation, people had to beg (and be met with silence) before the project deigned to grant this reasonable request. This is not the sort of permissionless innovation that free software is supposed to enable. Similarly, although Signal may have relented and made an .apk file available (perhaps due to pressure from more innovative and user-respecting platforms like Matrix), their stubbornness is still apparently preventing F-Droid from distributing it. Here's a better link to support that claim: https://forum.f-droid.org/t/signal-on-f-droid/13742/4 https://forum.f-droid.org/t/signal-on-f-droid/13742/4

tptacek 5y ago

It feels like the steady march of time has convincingly refuted this objection.

dane-pgp 5y ago
I would say it's Marlinspike's position that has aged badly. Despite the supposed innovation benefits of centralised control, Signal still requires phone numbers, and its main "innovation" has been adding a pump-and-dump crypto-coin, which users are forced to have the code for in their clients whether they want it or not, because he refuses to allow non-official clients to connect to Signal's servers. In fact he even objects to people installing the official client from F-Droid.[0] So it seems that in his mind, progress is "whatever direction I decide", and what we call freedom is what he would call "dangerous fracturing of my ecosystem". [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/fdroid/comments/q1jnbb/why_isnt_signal_at_fdroid/ https://old.reddit.com/r/fdroid/comments/q1jnbb/why_isnt_sig...
- hiq 5y ago
  What do your points have to do with the centralized nature of Signal, or the drawbacks of federated networks pointed out by the article?
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    If Signals direction was so much better they should have come a lot further since they have an easier task (and are better funded) than their main competitors (XMPP and Matrix). Instead many feel Signal has moved in a wrong direction with crypto currency.
    - hiq 5y ago
      You're just saying that Signal's priorities don't align with those of some people, but the point of the article is that, given certain priorities, they'll be more easily fulfilled if your system is centralized, nothing else. Whether these priorities are the "right" ones is orthogonal to the debate about decentralized vs federated architures.
- tptacek 5y ago
  Your "freedom" has in fact nothing to do with the project Signal is working on, and the fact that you want to sysadmin your phone, something only a tiny fraction of the world's population has or ever will have any interest in doing, has nothing to do with whether Signal is meeting its objectives. By all means, use Matrix.
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    I don't want to sysadmin my phone, I just want to remove Google from my threat model. That means I'd like everyone to be able to buy phones which come pre-installed with F-Droid as an alternative app store, so people get the benefit of reproducible builds of free software apps (ideally with binary transparency, and verifiers in multiple jurisdictions). Reliance on Google as a third party is just another example of the blind-spot that Marlinkspike has about the dangers of centralisation. This is seen in his resistance to making Signal work on devices that don't use the proprietary Google Play services[0], and the slowly boiling frog of developers no longer having control of their own keys when publishing in the Google Play store.[1] [0] https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/5450 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/5450 [1] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/01/android_app_bundle/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/01/android_app_bundle/
    - hiq 5y ago
      This is an issue from 2016, it's 2022 now and Signal works perfectly fine without Google Play Services. The .apk is there if you don't want to use Google Play Store: https://signal.org/android/apk/ https://signal.org/android/apk/ and it prompts for updates when they're available.
      - dane-pgp 5y ago
        Thank you for adding that context, which I should have included in my comment. I still think the issue from 2016 is worth reading, as the issue was closed on the basis of being a duplicate, but as a commenter on the issue points out: > Because all the refernced duplicate discussion threads trying to solve this are locked (why?), I'm raising my voice for this here. This is indicative of a project which not only resisted supporting users without Google Play services, but also resisted people questioning their decision. Two days after that plea, without any further explanation: > @signalapp locked and limited conversation to collaborators Of course an issue tracker isn't a discussion forum, but a good project team would have taken an extra couple of seconds to point issue reporters and commenters to an FAQ answer (assuming they had an answer that would withstand scrutiny). Anyway, my point is that despite the supposed merits of centralisation, people had to beg (and be met with silence) before the project deigned to grant this reasonable request. This is not the sort of permissionless innovation that free software is supposed to enable. Similarly, although Signal may have relented and made an .apk file available (perhaps due to pressure from more innovative and user-respecting platforms like Matrix), their stubbornness is still apparently preventing F-Droid from distributing it. Here's a better link to support that claim: https://forum.f-droid.org/t/signal-on-f-droid/13742/4 https://forum.f-droid.org/t/signal-on-f-droid/13742/4