I believed this was debunked by moxie somewhere on HN
Would you mind linking it? I've tried to see his past comments but couldn't find anything dated after the blog post on a first look. Just a lot of LibreSignal stuff.
Extract from that comment:
> We haven't patented any of the concepts here, and we've done a lot to explain and popularize them. We're happy for people to use these concepts to build their own implementations of similar protocols, but we don't want people slapping things together and calling that Signal Protocol.
That doesn't debunk anything in the blog post - it reinforces the point that moxie doesn't want any third-party implementations of the protocol.
It sounds like they'll defend the Signal trademark, but not the implementation concepts. I don't see how that's bad.
Especially with crypto, one small implementation error could ruin any security value. It's completely reasonable that they don't want their trademark used with code they aren't responsible for.
Yeah. "You can do whatever you want with our GPL'd code, so long as you follow the license, and we don't have any patents, just don't use our name/branding on stuff we don't control" is a reasonable way to ensure the reputation of your name. It's the same thing Firefox does with Linux distros who want to add their own patches.
Re:Signal Foundation
by rpglover64 on Monday February 26, 2018 @09:59AM
(#16465702)
> It's the same thing Firefox does with Linux distros who want to add their own patches.
"did", I think. I don't know which distros still run into this, but Debian now ships Firefox (RIP Iceweasel).
Or, conversely, modifications could add to the security value.
Did you read the license?
Obviously this is just one side of the story, but it sounds rather alarming.