The developer behind Pixelfed, Loops, and Sup, open source alternatives to Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp, respectively, is now raising funds on Kickstarter to fuel the apps’ further development.

The trio is part of the growing open social web, also known as the fediverse, powered by the same ActivityPub protocol used by X alternative Mastodon. The latter saw increased signups and use after the company formerly known as Twitter sold to Elon Musk in October 2022 and during the X exodus that followed the U.S. presidential election.

In the months and years following that sale, open source and decentralized apps like Mastodon and Bluesky (which uses the newer AT Protocol), have continued to grow their user bases, as people sought alternatives to centralized social media apps controlled by billionaires like Musk and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg.

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Edit: Link to the kickstarter

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[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Not on FDroid. Not open source

[–] ExFed@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Not open source

There are lots of good reasons to be upset with how Signal produces builds. And maybe Signal has no good reason why they keep opaque dependencies. But by every common definition of the term, Signal is open source. Being on FDroid is not the definition of open source.

Please don't gatekeep. There are better ways to criticize Signal. This is not one of them.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl -2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

If your releases include closed source blobs, then your software is closed source.

[–] ExFed@lemm.ee 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Following that logic:

Many popular Linux distros contain closed source blobs. Ergo Linux is closed source.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl -1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Linux is an open source kernel. Many operating systems that use linux ars closed source, yes. This is the position of the FSF.

And its why most Linux distros have an option to include closed source or not.

Signal, however, has no option. Its just closed source software.