While the Signal software itself is free software, my understanding is he trademarked the name Signal so you can’t fork it without rebranding it (similar to what Mozilla does with Firefox and Rust), and if you rebrand he forbids you from using the OWS servers.
Trademark is an entirely different issue from copyright and it’s my understanding that the trademark was the only legal avenue of attack he had against LibreSignal. Other forks of Signal such as Molly avoid using Signal’s trademark for that reason
I’m talking about actually blocking forks/third party clients on a technological level, not ToS or demands in github tickets. As far as I am aware he does not have that ability.
According to their readme the fork called Molly uses Signal’s servers. Can he block Molly from using Signal’s servers? Has he tried to?
Probably his stance is not as aggressive as everyone thinks. I think he is fine with frontends, but not server federation stuff. Maybe I could be wrong, but that is an explanation that I could think of.
I think his main issue was re-distributing a recompiled version of the official Signal client but he got a bit carried away when arguing. So I guess as long as there is no chance that a 3rd party client is mistaken for the official one, it is being tolerated for now.
There do exist some third party clients that did not get shut down.
deleted by creator
I’m confused about this. Are these surviving because Moxie didn’t know about them, or because he changed his stance on alt clients?
Signal is free software, he can’t technologically or legally stop forks or third party clients. All he can realistically do is complain about them
He shut down LibreSignal: https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issuecomment-217211165
While the Signal software itself is free software, my understanding is he trademarked the name Signal so you can’t fork it without rebranding it (similar to what Mozilla does with Firefox and Rust), and if you rebrand he forbids you from using the OWS servers.
Trademark is an entirely different issue from copyright and it’s my understanding that the trademark was the only legal avenue of attack he had against LibreSignal. Other forks of Signal such as Molly avoid using Signal’s trademark for that reason
The software is FOSS but the servers are under their control and they refuse federation or unofficial clients.
I’m talking about actually blocking forks/third party clients on a technological level, not ToS or demands in github tickets. As far as I am aware he does not have that ability.
According to their readme the fork called Molly uses Signal’s servers. Can he block Molly from using Signal’s servers? Has he tried to?
Probably his stance is not as aggressive as everyone thinks. I think he is fine with frontends, but not server federation stuff. Maybe I could be wrong, but that is an explanation that I could think of.
I think his main issue was re-distributing a recompiled version of the official Signal client but he got a bit carried away when arguing. So I guess as long as there is no chance that a 3rd party client is mistaken for the official one, it is being tolerated for now.