Signal is a treasure that shows us that more things than just Wikipedia can occupy the holy trio of Good, Popular, and Free, all at the same time (I would include having a user-aligned profit model such as donations instead of surveillance under Free/Good).
I hope that with all of these new users they are free to continue to provide their service for free, and even more so, that they may inspire us to build a better future with similar apps in other domains. They may definitely have some growing pains and tough moments ahead of them, but I'm ecstatic to see e2e getting so popular and users finally seeing the value in these kinds of things (after, for what seemed like a decade, getting anyone to care seemed impossible).
I'm still a bit concerned about the unique structuring of the Signal Foundation and the 100 million dollar loan it got from Brian Acton. Is there an expectation that the organization will be disbanded by the time the loan comes due in 2068? Brian will be 96 years old.
Maybe so that the charitable deduction could be split up among multiple years (forgive $X amount annually) instead of one enormous deduction taken all at once which would be ineffective?
(I don't actually know if this would work, just a guess.)
Not only that, but it shows us that projects matching that holy trio can still gain a footing today, rather than the beginning of the web being the only period in which such projects could have come into existence.
Wikipedia was definitely like this in its early days but surprised how many people think it’s a nonpartisan thing anymore. Maybe for some topics it can be still
I'm very cynical, much more so than you, however you do make a good point. I like that at least they have a little bit of transparency in the talk pages, even if im often not always happy with the consensus
The lack of federation, crippled data export and requirement for a phone number puts it into the "no good" category for me.
Doesn't matter how much Open Source they throw around, what matters is how much effort it will be to stop using your software. Signal so far, looks to run with the same lock-in tactics as everybody else and that in turn gives them the power to switch over from nice to naughty mode whenever they want.
Wait do we consider Wikipedia to be "Good" now? Just the banning of Fram in 2019[1] should be an indicator that the people steering the ship are probably not good.
I hope that with all of these new users they are free to continue to provide their service for free, and even more so, that they may inspire us to build a better future with similar apps in other domains. They may definitely have some growing pains and tough moments ahead of them, but I'm ecstatic to see e2e getting so popular and users finally seeing the value in these kinds of things (after, for what seemed like a decade, getting anyone to care seemed impossible).