Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login
Signal devs don't intend to support Apple M1 (github.com/signalapp)
15 points by toxypol on Nov 10, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 21 comments



Wow what abusive behavior!

Just because a tool is OSS doesn't mean it will be community driven, and it also doesn't mean the publisher is subservient to the community's whims. OSS just means you have options when you are done with the publisher.

The irony is that the whining is support for M1. If this was about running on something less proprietary than Apple maybe I would sympathize more.

Signal is a great product. I just sent them a donation in response to the disgusting behavior witnessed.


Totally agree with this.

Someone even say they have donated for a year, and will not donate until their demand is fulfilled.

Donation is voluntary. It's not a tool for demand the interest or forcing people fulfill request.


> Just because a tool is OSS

Signal is only Open source by name, as they don't authorize anyone to make their own clients. FOSS is about power to the end users, and Signal is fighting hard against it.


It's opensource by license.

Nobody has to be "authorized" to do anything with code shared. That's not how the licenses work.

> FOSS is about power to the end users, and Signal is fighting hard against it.

"power" here means the ability to derive your own forks (see https://github.com/dennisameling/Signal-Desktop).

Being OSS doesn't mean they have to be fully transparent on their plans, nor does it mean they have to cave to abusive behavior in PRs, feature requests or forums.


> OSS just means you have options when you are done with the publisher.

Except that with signal you don't have options as they only allow their signed clients.


The fact that client binaries are signed doesn't mean you can't use your own client. It means you can't make your own binaries and pretend they were from Signal.

You aren't suggesting that Signal share their code signing key are you?


> We don't intend to support M1 yet.

The post title should be fixed.


I agree, the last word is kind of key here. They never said they "don't intend to support" just not yet. Very different statement.


> If you want a bad treatment in developer community, this is the way to go.

Expectation surely changed in the last years. I have an M1 and don't expect any software to accommodate my bad choice of platforms, especially if there are ways you can just run it anyway.


It's not a bad choice at all.


I got the macbook air cheaply (basically for free) and I like the device. A passively cooled notebook with good power, display, HID. I have nothing against that and Apple built a decent product.

That said, for me this has little to do with the future of software and hardware innovation. In that regard it is a toy and is quickly delegated as such by other systems I use that tend to be more free and more powerful, just by the merit of giving me choice. Perhaps rougher around some edges than a stylized Apple product, sure. But anyway, this thread should not be about that.

But when I got the macbook, I was very aware that there will be hiccups in compatibility. I use non-native Blender and the performance is amazing considering that I use it with help of Rosetta on a passively cooled notebook. There might be a native implementation by now, but I would never presume to demand a project to accommodate my personal choice of processor architecture, even if someone already supplied a fix. Perhaps they just didn't have time to look at it or already had a solution under development and therefore closed a PR. I also think they don't owe any explanations. They probably close just as many PR for their projects without comment. To see it as an affront to the "developer community" is just a bit much.


They clearly have their own m1 implementation and the contributed one is 'not invented here'.


> Signal has a policy around not talking about future features

aka only we invent things here. open source in name only


Open source doesn't automatically mean community driven. Signal could have an entirely closed roadmap and plan, while still allowing you to see the source and fork it if you want something different. It's over the top to call that "open source in name only". It's real open source, you can do what you want with the source. The project roadmap is just not community driven.


> It's over the top to call that "open source in name only"

App updates roll out and the 'source' doesnt change for 11 months? Thats 'real open source'.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26345937


I'm wondering why they don't want to support the M1 platform at this time and feel they cannot discuss the reason. For a secure messaging app that smells like there could be some issues with guaranteeing security on the M1 platform. Maybe because they can't see what Apple is doing behind the scenes?

I'm not saying M1 had backdoors, just curious that maybe they don't have enough access (or time) to guarantee things?


Well, its open source for everyone to contribute so 'patches are welcome'.

As for M1 support, What happened to using Rosetta?


Rosetta has performance parity with Intel Macs but uses more power. Nearly every app has native support for Apple Silicon now.


An unoffical M1 version already exists, thanks to https://github.com/dennisameling.

But the Signal devs don't merge it. That makes it especially strange, what more could the community do?


Yeah I think the big issue is for MS Teams, that big is just a bad app overall.


This is a confusing post- are they complaining only about the desktop app?

As far as I know,

libsignal-protocol-c =/= Signal Desktop

Signal Technology Foundation =/= Signal Messenger LLC

So what they are complaining about is that Signal Desktop does not at this time work NATIVELY with M1, while it DOES work with rosetta 2.

So what they demand is for the app to work natively rather than through rosetta which indeed does sound like a feature update.

Unless I'm mistaken this title is very misleading then.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: