I have always had my doubts about how open and transparent signal is to its community, I so far have resisted the urge to join signal because of how adamant they are to creating yet another walled garden around their platform.
They have times and times again shown their disdain to interacting with their user base (unlike other open source platforms) and answering valid questions and concerns from their community. and them keeping secrecy about what is being worked behind the scenes and their very vague and evasive answers about future features.
To me signal's attitude is more inline with silicon valley venture startups than with a non-profit who listens to its user base concerns and needs. though they are working hard on switching more whatsapp users and keep growing.
They ignored the most asked feature for years which is the ability to sign-up without the need of a phone number. while they kept rolling meaningless features to privacy like reactions, stickers, backgrounds, group chats.. and kept answering that usernames are coming, but didn't give any details to how that would be implemented.
Hopefully Berty if released could become a viable solution. as to me right now signal isn't more than a whatsapp clone if they don't give up reliance on phone numbers