noja said: "Give us a github repo and we can build it ourself" and I pointed out that moxie never opposed it when people build the code themselves. I'm not denying that he doesn't like it when people distribute their own builds (F-Droid) or forks (LibreSignal), and I'm not a fan of that policy either. But I understand why he's acting this way. If you read the issues you so kindly linked, he explains his reasons, and they are valid points to make even if I don't like their consequences. It's a pity that as a result, Signal is controlled by a small group of people in Silicon Valley, just like any other software product these days. I would like to have a good native desktop client just as much as you. But that's not a reason to misrepresent his position, or to inject it into only tangentially related discussions.
I’m interpreting it in the way that noja is writing it from the perspective of distributions. As in, just link us a repo, and we (Fedora) can include it. That interpretation might be wrong, and I might have misinterpreted it because I’ve been working with distro maintainers on getting some of my software into distributions recently.
But with that interpretation (and the context around that, where users asked about including it in distros), my arguments are certainly relevant.
> If you read the issues you so kindly linked, he explains his reasons, and they are valid points to make even if I don't like their consequences.
His points are basically irrelevant if compared to the risks that the centralization causes.
Users of distributions have to trust their distro anyway, for many other packages (including the kernel build) already, trusting them for Signal, too, actually reduces the number of parties you have to trust.
EDIT3: Almost forgot, also you should read this comment where Moxie addressed LibreSignal: https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...
Moxie has publicly stated that he is against anyone publishing a third-party build of Signal.
He has openly and loudly ranted against F-Droid. Of course he's not against users building it for themselves, but he's publicly stated he won't allow F-Droid, or distributions, or anyone else, to build and publish the client, under the name Signal, so that it can connect to his servers.
Read the Signal-Android issues https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/53 https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/127 https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/281 and https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/6292, where moxie publicly states that he will not accept or allow any public distribution of third-party builds of Signal to connect to his servers.
He actually directly reached out to F-Droid, and demanded they take it down: https://web.archive.org/web/20160410152543/https://f-droid.o...
So, how the fuck is what I'm saying misleading?
EDIT: Oh, right, some of the linked issues were purged by him later on. Here's an archive.org link: https://web.archive.org/web/20160410153027/https://github.co...
EDIT2: The real question is why you continue to lie to defend Signal.