> What in the world do you think our motivation is, then?

I didn't have much doubt before. But once you double-down on technical strategies that entrench concentrated power of Google, Apple, etc and leave users without open source options, I have to start to wonder.

> What code contributions?

I guess we'll never know. I think more could have been done to bring them back in though. There was obviously significant interest in LibreSignal for a reason and the community sure looked big enough to curate a PR between them. I'm pretty sure that the only reason they'd have given a different name to the fork (which might have evolved into a solid PR), was that they'd been told blanket that FDroid was never going to happen and hard Google dependencies would continue to be baked in.

> It does not entitle you to use our service for your product, or to use our name for your product.

Mate, you've been spending too much time with corporate lawyers. Take a breath. It's not a "product". In the days that GPL was written, operating as a closed service wasn't something the founders had even contemplated. It just wasn't the done thing.

> We'd all be better off if projects like XMPP had also learned from their mistakes.

The core issue with XMPP was that MSN Messenger, ICQ, etc. had deeper pockets. It wasn't fundamental technical flaws in open protocols. Sure, protocols don't always get it right the first time. I don't think HTTP would be better today though if we had to use 10 different browsers from 10 different vendors with pages that won't link together. Yes, XMPP had some issues (chief of which for mobile, was battery drain resolved by push). Let's hope Matrix gets traction.

> I don't know what you consider "the FOSS community," but I think of them as being the same people who have been sending me a torrent of verbal abuse, legal threats, and even death threats pretty much non-stop over the past three years. At no point have I wanted any part of that.

Well that's pretty sad. The BSD kernel of your iPhone, the Linux kernel of your Google devices and the GNU user space you enjoy on Linux are what the FOSS community have built. It just sounds like you're painting the whole community as abusive now.

Death threats etc should be reported to police. Likewise the community shouldn't be tolerating abuse. My condolences that you've had to go through that @moxie. It's bullshit and behaviours like that help no one.

No doubt, it's been traumatic and stressful, so I want to cut you a lot of slack. This in no way excuses their behaviour and I've never seen you engage in abuse, but mate (and recognising we're all human), your tone hasn't always come across as encouraging either.

> Plenty of people have used the Signal source to build their own projects (some even in "the FOSS community" like SMSSecure), so I don't know how you can say it's closed. Plenty of other people have also come to our project with an understanding of our development goals, and have helped to contribute to making Signal something better. A very small vocal minority of FOSS moralists have decided that we should have to do whatever they want if they scream loudly enough, and have contributed very little of anything but verbal abuse.

It sounds like it's always just going to be a protocol issue. Signal is a closed service and a closed network, unless you're using Signal's App. The GPL for the app in that context seems fairly meaningless in practical terms.

To anyone looking on, from the outside, it looks like OWS has taken a giant flip from their previous position: https://twitter.com/lyon01_david/status/733096322304249856. Maybe you need to work on your PR. When people see companies like Facebook given rights, but open source are not, it naturally raises eyebrows. Good on you for opening the iOS libraries now, but maybe it should just have been clearly stated (or repeated when necessary) that it was your intention all along, otherwise it really does give the impression it was only due to 'complaints'.

The fact that you keep painting other projects as "products" and legitimate security concerns as mere 'FOSS moralism', does make people really ponder what the development goals are.