It would be interesting to know how you do see Signal, then.<p>After reading your comments on the LibreSignal tracker, my impression was that you are very much writing with your business hat on, as you are framing alternative clients as &quot;products&quot; and trying to protect the Signal brand, as well as preventing third-party clients from using your service - all typical business moves.<p>I can see how federation breaks the phone-number-based identity and discoverability, so I accept your position in that regard.<p>However, opening up the service to community-developed clients would be A Good Thing. You have to maintain backward compatibility to a certain degree for the official client anyway. If community clients fail to roll out a new protocol version, it will be a valid move to lock them out together with outdated official installations. You wrote that maintaining servers is difficult, but I am sure that it is possible to find a scheme where your additional financial burden of accepting (but not providing support for) third-party clients is compensated for.