Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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Signal Server is effectively closed source software right now (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The Signal Server repository hasn't been updated since April 2020. There are a bunch of links about this here but I found this thread the most interesting.

To me, this is unforgivable behaviour. Signal always positioned themselves as "open source", and the Server itself is under the best license for server software (AGPLv3 -- which raises questions about the legality of this situation).

Signal's whole approach to open source has constantly been underwhelming to say the least. Their budget-Apple attitude (secrecy, i.e. "we can never engage the community directly", "we will never merge/accept PRs", etc) has lead to its logical conclusion here, I guess. I have been somewhat of a "Signal apologist" thus far (I almost always defend them & I think a lot of criticism they get it very unfair) but yeah I'm over Signal now.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 children)

I recommend Delta Chat, it doesn't needs to create an account since it is just an email client with a chat interface, it is not a replacement for your fancy chat app but for your email app, everyone have email, so will need an email app anyway, it makes email easy to use and encrypted out of the box without your friends having to know what encryption means.

I like XMPP but UI/UX is really poor, it is surprising that this email client has a much better UI/UX than Conversations, it has swipe to reply, etc. I found Conversations ridiculously "hard" to use, blabber.im improves a lot of small details that have an impact in the users every day workflow

https://delta.chat

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

Delta Chat does look really cool. Like you said, it’s client (testing on iOS) is nice. It’s a shame their desktop app is Electron though.

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

I have tried it and it is fast, but I would also like to avoid Electron, I think they are considering to replace Electron in the future

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

Well, fast on your computer. I have got continued freezes with its desktop version. I hope it changes Electron by something native.

It is great on mobile.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 years ago (1 children)

when was that? I used to have freezes in the past but recent versions (prereleases, not stable releases) are faster

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 years ago

Let's wait the next stable release then but the freezes are not because of the core at all but because of Electron. Because of the core (or something in the "backend" side).

I have experienced it with other Electron apps too in a similar situation by the way it freezes, how did render the interface at all, how responsive it is, etc and comparing reports with other people both IRL and GitHub (Wire, Signal, etc).