You’re missing the point. Every project has core team/developers. They (the passer-bys) are the most valuable by being the added value, the differentiators that close-source and the (neu) closed-platform open-source projects can’t have.
It is valid that a developer (or developers) of some projects may not want any kind of feedback, and just want to do their own thing. But the original “social coding” platform is not exactly the best fit for such projects.
That’s a weird outlook. I would postulate that (pseudo-)anonymous passer-bys are collectively probably the most valuable contributors to open-source. That one random well-researched easily-reproducible obvious-in-hindsight issue or patch that makes you go wtf.
Annoyance would come from people who would create a “community” construct in the first place, even if it didn’t exist or was needed, just to be a busyworking “member” of. And those types often wouldn’t mind identifying themselves, if not for everyone, for a host like GH.
Recently, I’ve been frequenting an “anonymous” old platform or two which are nowhere near their peak, and have a very high ratio of pure drivel, just in hopes of running into the random anonymous passer-bys of old mentioned above. Passer-bys who would never come near the M$/AI ID-requiring enshitified GH of today. And what do you know! I’ve seen issues (mostly performance ones) show-cased related to a couple of tools I contribute to, that neither I nor the upstream developers knew about.
Anyway, what I was actually hinting at is that online communication existed for a long time before ID-centric social media came into the scene. This even predates the web itself (newsgroups …), and it wasn’t exactly an unmanageable wild west. Most spaces in fact were much nicer than the ID-centric social media platforms of today.
What do you think the internet was like pre-Facebook?
Serious question, how old are you?
f-droid represents a distro model with a trust model and certain requirements including build ones. Think of it as the Debian of Android.
When f-droid support is mentioned, it’s not a question of mere APK availability. All APKs after all are available if you know where to look. And it just happens that f-droid compatible 3rd party repositories already exist without the strict requirements (e.g. IzzyOnDroid).
Beyond warring against any kind of third party build (don’t let me get started on forks), Signal uses google services dependencies, so it’s not just about the source of the binary APK. Note that whether these dependencies are hard, or “just!” a default, is not that relevant in my books (this is an active point of contention across many many apps).
This insistent attempt at defending this blessed supposedly secure messenger seems infinitely weirder than what any fanperson of any other app can muster! I put imaginary hypotheticals that don’t even understand the point of f-droid, like “it is perfectly capable of enshittification” into that bracket. The continuous attempt at painting a false binary of Signal and Telegram is even more pathetic.
google-play requirement/lack of f-droid is an immediate disqualifier.
Is that simpler for you to grok?
I hope your failed attempt at red-herring is accidental, and stems from lacking the ability at basic logical understanding.
At least Telegram was always available via f-droid. And good forks are also available, like the self-documentedly named Forkgram ;) Not to mention third party apps.
Signal never was, and moxie is the primary reason why the supposed secure messenger failed what amounts to literally this first requirement. This is also the reason why people were looking for other options like Wire, which eventually did deliver f-droid support, but they took their time, and by the time they did, most of the early “hype” was already dead.
I didn’t care for anything moxie had to say since, as the stench was already too strong. Celebrating his contribution to “secure” messaging in WhatsApp later was the shit-smelling cherry on top. And anyway, the last time I checked, moxie is not even involved with Signal anymore, and it has been in the hands of board suit types, some with public questionable past, for a while.
You can obviously want whatever you want. But this was not a part of the implied social contract in GH. And people are objecting to it becoming one, hence this thread.
GH always had “moderation tools”, so you can ban people or restrict access. They could have added a restriction level for “verified users”. But they are choosing not to.
And yes, people will be hosting/moving projects elsewhere. Many already did.