this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2024
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Free and Open Source Software
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Its not a surprise but it has not really received a lot of attention since people have reported it.
https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Desktop/issues/5751
Also signal as a service is not really open source because it is not selfhostable. The server backend is proprietary afaik.
The back end is open source, but sometimes they've lagged years behind releasing the source code. Other developers have stood up copies of the signal network. Session, for example.
You can self host your own signal, but it's not federated, so you'd have nobody to talk to
So effectively its not FOSS.
It's absolutely FOSS. It is not, however federated. But that is not a requirement to be free and open source software
Think of it like this, Linux is free and open source software, even if I don't give you a shell on my computer.
You can use the code, however you want, in any project you want.
I think this is the more worrying part if true. The backend is licensed under the AGPL, so this would technically be a violation of their terms
Edit: For anyone else reading I looked into it a bit more and looks like the issue came to a head around 3 years ago, with this comment being made after a year of missing source code. The public repo has been pretty active since then, so the issue seems to be resolved
The AGPL doesn't require you, the author, to do anything. As the copyright holder, you decide the license your code falls under. You publish code with a license so others can use it. You can always do with your own work on your own computers as you wish, assuming you don't also use other (A)GPL code that forces you to release your own.
Many companies sell GPL software this way; the (A)GPL version is free to use, but if you don't want to share your alterations and any code you integrate the (A)GPL code with, you pay money to get a non-AGPL licensed copy. Qt does this, for instance, so car manufacturers can design their closed source vehicle dashboards and open source projects can use Qt to build a Linux desktop.
It isn’t, because their business practices violate the four FOSS essential freedoms:
Specifically, freedom 4 is violated, because you are not permitted to distribute a modified version of the program that connects to the Signal servers (even if all your modified version does is to remove Google Play Services or something similar).
Molly.im
The license does not prevent number four from happening, they just ask people not to do it