So whats the point having a Foss setup? Its not for promoting clients and servers? Why dont they instead say its source visible, peope can point put vulnerabilities and all because thats what it is at the end of day today.

Pretending to be Foss and then not allowing third party clients, servers is not nice imo

You can fork the signal client and server and setup a competing network. You just won't be allowed on the official Signal network. That's the entire point of FOSS.

Open source vs. open network are fairly orthogonal. AIM and ICQ were never open source, but had several 3rd party clients. Outlook is closed-source, but still federates with other e-mail servers.

I'll use an open-hardware analogy. Let's say there's a open-hardware go kart. The publishers of the original go kart also own a race track. They only allow their original design on the race track. You can take their design, modify it and drive anywhere you want.

A competing race track is closed hardware, with copyrights and patents on their karts. If you base a kart off of their design, they will sue you. If they deign to let you take your home-built kart designed by someone else on their track, they aren't open hardware. If they publish the exact specifications required for karts to run on their track and encourage home-built karts to run on their tracks, they still aren't open hardware.

> Open source vs. open network are fairly orthogonal. AIM and ICQ were never open source, but had several 3rd party clients.

Nit-picking: AIM had an open-source protocol (TOC), that AOL had created for their TiK open-source AIM client. Some 3rd party clients used the protocol too. It was missing lots of features, but the basics generally worked. After ICQ moved to OSCAR protocol, I believe TOC would work off and on for ICQ as well as AIM.

Thanks for that bit of information. As far as I can tell it's the only thing to come out of this thread that wasn't a complete waste of my time :)

If it was 10 years ago, I could remember what sorts of things TOC was missing but OSCAR had, and give you a bit more useless information; but here's the best I've got.

IIRC, it was mostly anything you needed to get beyond the bare minimum. TOC could message, and manage your buddy list, and set your idle time and your status message; but it couldn't do typing notifications, and probably not some other things. I believe they used TOC tunneled over HTTP(s?) for their Java applet client, if you used that.

I seem to recall it went through periods of unavailability from time to time, so I would go back and forth between TOC stuff I wrote and understood and OSCAR libraries that barely half worked.

that is complicated. why don't they allow third party clients on their servers or third party servers on first party apps? reddit allows clients, matrix, irc, xmpp, even telegram has floss forks that work interdependently. why don't they simply use something like mozilla license, aka copy our code or whatever, just not the name?

> That's the entire point of FOSS.

foss as in free to check code, submit patches, create clients on and on...

i recently read the same question somewhere and the reply was some scary long answer how maintaining a fork is mighty difficult because you have to be few months behind upstream, fix bugs, manage certificates, work on apps.... so essentially make it difficult to set up competition and still pass oss test because source. smh

> When we call software “free,” we mean that it respects the users' essential freedoms: the freedom to run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute copies with or without changes. This is a matter of freedom, not price, so think of “free speech,” not “free beer.”[1]

All of these things are allowed by Signal. Look at what is happening to WhatsApp right now because of damage to its brand. Moxie thinks that allowing 3rd party clients or federated servers would damage the Signal brand. If you disagree with him, go ahead and fork it. There are probably 100s of forks of signal that let you connect to unofficial servers. If it weren't open source that option would not be available to you. How many forks of the (closed source) official AIM client are there? Of the server? In terms of freedom offered by the software Signal is positioned pretty well.

1: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....

> you are saying free to redistribute copies with or without change but you are saying connecting to official server is bad for brand. what happened to copies without change? how can you justify that? arent you restricting that line?

Nobody is stopping you from distributing copies without change. Do it right now. Announce it to the world. It's 100% fine.

> if moxie is so worried about the sugarflake brand, why does it not copyright the brand name? shouldnt that solve their problems? why pretend open source when its not

Signal is actually trademarked. Scroll to the bottom of the signal website: and you will see "Signal is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries." Nothing new about this. Firefox is trademarked as well (hence e.g. iceweasel)

I'm sure the author of openssh runs an ssh server somewhere. He doesn't let me connect to it. That doesn't make ssh less open-source.

Software freedom requires the freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose. That includes the freedom and right to connect to use it to connect to the Signal network. Moxie restricts that freedom, violating the spirit of free software. End of story. Your car analogy is irrelevant.

Maybe Signal is open source but not free software. That just shows how open source misses the point.

Software freedom requires the freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose. That includes the freedom and right to connect to Theo de Raat's private SSH server. Theo de Raat restricts that freedom, violating the spirit of free software. End of story. My car analogy is irrelevant.

OpenSSH is open source, but not free software. That just shows how open source misses the point.

I can fill in the above template with GNU's CVS servers in the 90s, if you prefer GPL to BSD.

You are not prohibited from connecting to Theo de Raat's private SSH server using OpenSSH. You are prohibited from connecting to Theo de Raat's private SSH server. The client has nothing to with it.

But if Theo were to grant me access, but disallow e.g. putty, that would be well within his rights, no?

No, what software you use is none of his business.

What software I use is none of his business right up until it starts affecting computers he owns. This isn't that complicated. If I decide that I don't want people wearing red shirts to enter my house, then that's stupid, but within my rights and does not meaningfully infringe upon your right to wear whatever color shirt you want.

I don't see how restrictions on what is allowed to connect to privately run servers can magically cause software to become non-free. Nor do I see any way in which those restrictions existing (again on computers neither you nor I own) in any way violates the spirit of free software or in any way denies you and I the freedoms that free software is supposed to respect.

Your house, a personal area, is in no way comparable to a public messenger network.

> What software I use is none of his business right up until it starts affecting computers he owns.

Which client implementing the Signal protocol you use does not affect him, therefore it's none of his business.

I don't think that traditional advocates of Free Software (RMS for example) would agree that those running a server must accept connections from just any build (however changed it has become from the originally released sources) of the Free Software client. The freedom of the Signal software consists in anyone being free to fork both client and server sources and run their own server on their own infrastructure.

ever heard of api?

Yes, of course I have, and so has Moxie. In his classic essay on why Signal will not be federated, he clearly explains why he does not believe that this is a good approach.

So: most of the people here, when they think about concepts like “software freedom”, look to the major thinkers in this field. You can operate with a different definition if you like, but you can't be surprised when people react as if your views are odd.

Most people look to authority instead of thinking themselves, you mean.

Yes. Source available but not free software.

The point is you can claim to be FOSS and people will buy it.

Thats what I am trying to say. You disallow third party clients from joining lyrical servers because federation bad and fud about "brand".

Saying here you go. Open source. You can fork a client but dont connect, you can fork server but dont use official apps.

I do not know if GPL code can have this restriction. Its like saying Tesla car has open source or Foss software. Free to fork it but you need to build your own car to run this software. Its free, is open source, just not usable.