The perils of federated protocols (2016)

If apps like LibreSignal—a fork of the Signal app that removes the GCM dependency—want to communicate with other Signal users, they must either use the same servers or run their own servers that are federated with those run by OWS. It restricts what the service provider can change because the existing features still need to be supported:

When someone recently asked me about federating an unrelated communication platform into the Signal network, I told them that I thought we’d be unlikely to ever federate with clients and servers we don’t control. The focus for Signal is on making it usable for ordinary users:

But the fact remains that Signal uses Google services and various people (including some that are precisely the target audience for encrypted messaging) do not trust Google or, perhaps, worry about what the company might be compelled to do by various governments.

Source: lwn.net