Free and Open Source Software

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Signal under fire for storing encryption keys in plaintext (stackdiary.com)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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As mentioned in the comments, plain text keys aren't bad because they are necessary. You have to have at least one plain text key in order to be able to use encryption

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (4 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (3 children)

So effectively its not FOSS.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] furikuri 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

The back end is open source, but sometimes they've lagged years behind releasing the source code.

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

Remote Network Interaction; Use with the GNU General Public License.

Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software

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