I notice the README file for signal-cli [1] says registration "may require solving a CAPTCHA challenge", which might involve running proprietary software. I found a forum post that says this also sometimes happens on sign-in [2], which might make it difficult to use Signal without proprietary software. I might try it anyway at some point because it does say "may" :)

[1] https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli [2] https://community.e.foundation/t/signal-and-hcaptcha/83470

[1] https://crewapp.com/ [2] https://connecteam.com/

A major downside of this is that if someone did figure out how to withdraw a bunch of my money from my account, I wouldn't notice until I go to the bank, which I only do once per month or so. I wish my bank had an option to send me an email on every transaction, but as is I have to go to the ATM and request an email with the recent transaction info.

Partially as a result of this limitation, and partially because I enjoy playing the "Where's George?" game (which involves using cash), I pay for everything with cash and only use my debit card for withdrawing cash. I've heard that it's possible to get an ATM-only card for this purpose, so I will probably do that eventually, so that if someone gets my card information they will not be able to make online transactions.

I already have a VoIP phone number through JMP and would be happy to use it for Signal, but I've read that registration isn't an option on the desktop client, even if I also have a phone number. I looked for a fork or alternate compatible client that allows registration but didn't find one.

It's meaningful that the Windows 10 install method has no (official) way to disable it, but I don't think making something optional could make it not a back door, if it was one before.

Even when automatic updates are disabled, I'm not going to be reading every update so the effect seems mostly the same, regardless of whether updates are automatic or not.

The FSF's definition of "back door" (at the bottom of the linked page) is "any feature of a program that enables someone who is not supposed to be in control of the computer where it is installed to send it commands" which leaves a lot of ambiguity with the words "supposed to be". I am not sure how to interpret this definition.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/proprietary-back-doors.html#...

There's a small number (~100?) of commercial games that also allow resale through Creative Commons licenses on itch.io. you can use filters like "assets-cc4-by-sa" plus "code-gpl3" to find games like that, but there's a lot of possible license combinations so it's difficult to see all games like that at once. I've also seen a couple of digital commercial games that allow resale but had some other restrictions (e.g. forbidding reverse engineering), from Humble Bundle, if I remember correctly, but in those cases I didn't know that was allowed until after I bought the game, so searching for games like that seems pretty difficult.

Maybe there are games on GOG that allow this too, but I don't know how I'd search for them.

Backdoors can be well-hidden, but this is the kind of software that people look for vulnerabilities in [1]. This gives a lot less flexibility to any potential backdoor.

Additionally, someone could decide to write a new Signal client from scratch, designed to be compatible with the original server. Such a client would probably be less secure overall, at least at first, but it couldn't have a backdoor inserted by Signal developers, since it wouldn't contain any Signal code. Since the original client also supports end-to-end encryption, a new client can be compatible with old clients.

[1] https://community.signalusers.org/t/overview-of-third-party-...

Maybe I am misunderstanding the summary, but it says: "If you publicly use any adapted version of this database, or works produced from an adapted database, you must also offer that adapted database under the ODbL." <https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/summary/>

Although copyright-infringing books may be illegal to redistribute in general, the difficulty in determining what counts as copyright infringement and what counts as fair use means you can't really tell for sure which books are illegal to distribute and which aren't, so I'm not sure that really counts as "banned". 60 Years Later had an actual court order which makes things a little more concrete.

For example, I would describe a method to do something in a video game as "tech" but in my mind I would expand it to "technology" if I thought about it. I didn't realize that the word "technique" would be a better fit in those contexts. Looking at Wikipedia [1], it looks like the words are pretty closely related so I haven't been using the word completely wrong.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology

I think a problem with this idea is that terms of service can be difficult to understand. For example a lot of licenses or terms of service forbid "reverse engineering" entirely. In my mind, "reverse engineering" is just trying to understand something based on observing what it does, and even though a legal agreement is probably using a more strict definition, how am I supposed to know where the boundary is? "Reverse engineering" isn't usually defined in the agreement itself. And if what I want to do is considered "reverse engineering", it might not be legally enforceable anyway.

Sometimes I buy a physical object, take it home, and then open it and find conditions that I would have disagreed with if I knew about them. I've noticed this with books, but the same could happen with software. I don't know if conditions like that would be legally enforceable, but I think the complexity of understanding this makes individual decisions about what conditions to accept a poor solution to what Stop Killing Games is trying to solve.

The Steam Subscriber Agreement [1] seems to prohibit reverse engineering games (referred to as "content" in the agreement), but I guess I'm misunderstanding it because some GPL games are on Steam (e.g. SuperTux [2]).

I agree that people shouldn't buy a product if they disagree with the conditions, but I think this is too complicated for most people to do for every product. Maybe some of these conditions should be illegal to even put in a terms of service, even if they already aren't enforceable.

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement

[2] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1572920/SuperTux/

There are many people who would advocate for free software and not free culture, but jxself has also written in support of free culture: https://jxself.org/drm_and_free_culture.shtml

That post is from 15 years ago, so of course he could have changed his views since then (but I don't see any evidence of that in this case).

If there has to be no way to change the radio's functionality, would that mean that simply using a binary blob wouldn't be enough. Wouldn't device vendors have to sign it as well?

Also, that makes me wonder about the one Wi-Fi chip I know of that does have free firmware: AR9271 [2]. I wonder what makes that situation different. Maybe I'm misunderstanding and there's firmware on a separate chip stored in ROM.

[1] http://www.fcc.gov/documents/compliance-guide [2] https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/AR9271

It's not the same as what you suggest, but there's still hope you could regain consciousness, and this is a process that some companies already have infrastructure for. It is pretty expensive though.