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Snap Store administrators removed signal-desktop from Ubuntu Snap

forum.snapcraft.io

371–380 of 443 posts

Re: Snap Store administrators removed signal-desktop from Ubuntu Snap

#371
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if your post was satire, but isn’t everything you mentioned doable with apt already? Signal already has an official apt repo so all you need to do is the standard apt upgrade and everything including signal would be updated.

The problem with that is now you've given a 3rd party power to update your system in any way that they want. Which is fine when it's just signal but less ideal when it's 20-30 randomish companies of varying degrees of trustworthiness. The point behind flatpaks et. al. is sandboxing applications so that they can be safely updated automatically.

I don't use apt but I think you can use the pinning feature in apt and only allow the Signal application from Signal's repo. It doesn't solve all problems since they could add dependencies from other repos, but at least it is partly stops them from adding their own dependencies in their repo.

Re: Snap Store administrators removed signal-desktop from Ubuntu Snap

#372
post #252
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it's owned by Meta, who I really wouldn't trust even if they say it's E2EE.

To be honest I don’t see a strong reason to trust signal either except better marketing. There are so many scandals that come to mind, like not updating the FOSS code for years. I’m no fan of Meta, and they have incentive to hoover up data. But I don’t have a good reason to trust signal other than that everyone on hackernews seems to love them.

Look at how signal vs meta make their money. Meta's entire business model is built around directly violating people's privacy, and conspiring with other businesses to violate people's privacy.

Meta is a publicly traded company. Signal is a 501c3, it's a completely different kind of organization.

Re: Snap Store administrators removed signal-desktop from Ubuntu Snap

#373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, let's teach users to paste sudo commands into the terminal. That's great.

>Yeah, let's teach users to paste sudo commands into the terminal. That's great. This is also one of my fears with pushing non tech savvy people away from Apple/Windows and onto Linux without the Snap, Flathub, or other such curated stores that ship with the distro, without which they would need to touch the terminal and run commands found on the internet. GNU/Geeks will keep shouting religiously how insecure Windows…

I've seen this extremely sketchy variant a few times

  curl -sfL www.marginalia.nu/install.sh | sudo sh -
Even without sudo, this is extremely sketchy.

Re: Snap Store administrators removed signal-desktop from Ubuntu Snap

#374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yeah, let's teach users to paste sudo commands into the terminal. That's great. This is also one of my fears with pushing non tech savvy people away from Apple/Windows and onto Linux without the Snap, Flathub, or other such curated stores that ship with the distro, without which they would need to touch the terminal and run commands found on the internet. GNU/Geeks will keep shouting religiously how insecure Windows…

I've seen this extremely sketchy variant a few times curl -sfL www.marginalia.nu/install.sh | sudo sh - Even without sudo, this is extremely sketchy.

Is it meaningfully sketchier than downloading a .deb and calling dpkg -i on it?

Or cloning a git repo and building it?

Re: Snap Store administrators removed signal-desktop from Ubuntu Snap

#375
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but that means your criteria for a basic messenger app is something that does everything that all the other messaging apps do .

No, that's not just my criteria, but Signal's own, when they entered the market as an alternatives to WhatsApp. If you climb in the ring with Ali , then you'd better be able to box. And it's also the criteria of millions of other users who have not switched to Signal because of the bugs, quirks, and lack of basic features for a modern messaging app. Just being able to send encrypted ASCII characters to someone is not…

No, they are your personal criteria. Your “gripes” as you said.

> And it's also the criteria of millions of other users who have not switched to Signal because of the bugs, quirks, and lack of basic features for a modern messaging app.

You have absolutely no knowledge that this is why people haven’t switched, indeed it’s highly unlikely that it would have been as successful as it has if this were the case. People move to Signal because they distrust Facebook and telegram.

The more logical explanation is simply network effects and inertia. Occam’s razor.

Re: Snap Store administrators removed signal-desktop from Ubuntu Snap

#376
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you recommend as an alternative?

keybase.io has been great, although it's not without its risks either since it was acquired by Zoom. It's still up and seemingly maintained but AFAIK there's no new feature work. I've heard WhatsApp recommended from people I trust, but I have never personally used it so can't speak from experience.

> keybase.io has been great

> Crypto thing they attempted

well...

Re: Snap Store administrators removed signal-desktop from Ubuntu Snap

#377
post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. We spoke to our attorneys and found the breakdown in communication. We are working to rectify and reinstate signal-desktop ASAP. Sorry for the confusion.

Why is Signal, a company that prides itself in being tech-centric, allowing lawyers to send DMCA requests without consulting anybody?

[deleted]

Re: Snap Store administrators removed signal-desktop from Ubuntu Snap

#378

Signal Snap Maintainer here, this is because of a DMCA takedown request from lawyers representing Signal. Canonical is currently working with them to clear things up. Canonical's communication to me was initially lacking due to issues in their process, the process has been amended and I'm back in the loop again.

Typical behavior from Signal. They have a track record of hostility that we as a community should really not be tolerating. I do not use Signal and I tell my friends not to, either. Play nice or don't play at all.

I personally do not think this is user hostile because users have an interest in being able to distinguish between official and unofficial distribution of software, in particular in a security relevant case like this.

I used this snap package thinking it was an official one, if I had known that it isn't I wouldn't have installed it.

Re: Snap Store administrators removed signal-desktop from Ubuntu Snap

#379

Signal Snap Maintainer here, this is because of a DMCA takedown request from lawyers representing Signal. Canonical is currently working with them to clear things up. Canonical's communication to me was initially lacking due to issues in their process, the process has been amended and I'm back in the loop again.

You didn't realize what you were doing was against the license?

It wasn't against the license. It's AGPL v3, about as open as it gets.

Re: Snap Store administrators removed signal-desktop from Ubuntu Snap

#380
post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this extremely sketchy variant a few times curl -sfL www.marginalia.nu/install.sh | sudo sh - Even without sudo, this is extremely sketchy.

Is it meaningfully sketchier than downloading a .deb and calling dpkg -i on it? Or cloning a git repo and building it?

Yeah, it's possible for a web server to detect and change the returned data maliciously. Even with user agent and all other factors changed to match, it's possible to detect even the difference between being piped into another command vs being redirected to a file.
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