LMAO @ everyone who would have denied this was true groveling at the feet of the US government’s spectacularly abd inexplicably generous Open Technology Fund after devoting 3000 comments to bashing what remains of Firefox for [checks notes] making the UI better so the community doesn’t need to spend their time making sidebars and vertical tabs… You guys are worms. Today I get to be the rock. 🥴
It’s a branch of the US military-intelligence-propaganda-industrial complex. Or was—I’m not sure if Trump’s executive order to eliminate it stuck.
JDPON Don strikes again. People got their hopes up too much when he acted like he was axing USAID programs. Just a change of management and perhaps some messaging.
Sallaries should act as a motivator for better leadership, so these wages, at least in norwegian context, seems to be too high, too corrupting.
What a scam…
Hey guys I help orphans on a non profit, I’m a very good person. BTW I get paid 1M a year
I would really love for some of the people here talking about how it’s a good thing this “talent” is retained to explain what it is exactly these people do. I am 100% certain they hate these people in their own companies. But somehow when they see it in an NGO corporate structure it’s all sunshine and daisies.
Non profits are not charities.
These salaries are quite low in the tech sector.
US and the West are ‘managed’ by elite psychopaths that don’t give a shit about ordinary peoples ‘privacy’ or similar fancy tools for the wage-slaves. They have used these tools to try and break through specific nations/groups information defenses. ANYTHING sponsored by the US Oligarchy is either a part of local US control, or an attempt at reaching more people with rich-man propaganda in nations that defend themselves against US lies and color-revolutions…
We need to find a way to fund critical FLOSS. No, not like that!
40,000$ per month is way more than anyone will ever need. For sure I would stop donating, from the top of my 1,400€ per month.
I agree that’s quite a lot of money. I’m not sure what if any the cap should be. I guess my attitude is that if they are bringing in so much money, and everyone working there is getting a fair cut… then power to them? I don’t donate either, though I’ve been using Signal since before it was called that. I remember when they first introduced calling as a companion app called Red Phone.
I’ll agree it’s high, but then you have absolutely no idea what they do or have to put up with. Non profits should put the money they make above and beyond their expenses back into their employees, at all levels, not just the top. If you can’t beat em, join em!
My point is merely that they don’t need my money, nor anyone else’s. I am not familiar with the way 501c3 nonprofits work in the US.
Agreed!
I think that’s precisely what this is questioning : is this helping fund critical FOSS?
What if a fraction of that money instead went to Signal infrastructure? Wikimedia? FSF which initially made GNU PG? FSFE? NLNet which supports Delta Chat? Sovereign Tech Fund? etc rather than individuals?
I don’t think anybody is criticizing that hard working people contributing to a good project are well paid. I believe the question is rather what’s the cost to OTHER projects when there is 1 project, not an umbrella projects which funds others (again like NLNet or the Sovereign Tech Fund).
What model are we reproducing and what’s the risk?
FWIW the question isn’t new. It happens also with Mozilla with the compensation of its C-suite staff, not the “random” software engineer.
I think it clearly is helping. Signal is a mature, polished project. It is first-class. The infrastructure is obviously well-funded. As for other projects, I also wish they had more money but I don’t think it’s useful to criticize Signal for the fact that they don’t.
I don’t know the intricacies of signal as a company or if they support any bad actors or whatnot, but I do hate to see flack for non-profit leaders and employees getting paid competitive salaries. Like if people are actually worth that much in the economy, why not try to stack the team so they’re incentivized to do well? Especially in the shit pot that is America.
I would be curious to see the spread of overhead between salaries and fundraising, outreach, etc to actually get their product out there. Because if those are balanced in favor toward actually running the business, marketing it well, and fundraising, I’d say these people more than deserve these salaries.
Also maybe no stock options like other corps? So more salary compensation
The company asks for donations while receiving funding from the US government and scraping metadata from activists. You people are absolute marks.
and scraping metadata from activists
You have proof on that?
and scraping metadata from activists.
And what does it have to with this?
I mean yes, it’s not ideal that they require a phone number. But how does that translate to metadata scrapping and especially from activists?
A CEO should be paid enough to live comfortably if you work at a non-profit, but if you need to be paid market rate then you’re probably not passionate about the position. When your job is fulfilling a public good rather than delivering shareholder value, that and a decently generous salary should be reward enough.
That said, I think Signal is better than Mozilla on this front, because they don’t have a long history of terrible decisions each of which coming with increased executive compensation.
EDIT: Also the CEO of Mozilla made 6-7 million per year (haven’t checked the new CEO though). Way more than Meredith Whittaker’s $750,000. So honestly Signal is an order of magnitude better on this front.
CEOs need to be constantly threatened with execution by a dictatorship of the proletariat
not my circus, not my monkeys
but them positions… as mr. cici famously quipped, that’s alot of buffers
you really need a VP of eng and then a director of eng and further liaisons until you reach an actual engineer for a shop that has one product?
again, what do I care, spend it in good health
This is basically a parody of the problems with NGO corporate compensation, yes, but I feel like everyone is avoiding the elephant in the room & wishing goodwill to people making e2ee messaging that is only safe for the US government to use. Ask yourself, would the German prime minister even trust this shit?
It’s not like Delta Chat main development team is even exempt from this, not sure if OP is aware of this but they want the EU to save them. Fat chance guys! Open source developers need a workers government or total independence, or they will discover they are political tools that can be dispensed with when no longer necessary. Just look at the recent pressure on Linux to eject Russian developers.
I’m really trying hard to see the point that’s being made. Is it just the “high” salaries, or is there some other implication? The OP seems to be insinuating that Signal is a honeypot or something. I am going to need a lot more proof than, “hey, these guys work at a non-profit and they aren’t underpaid!” Given that most tech jobs offer stock options in addition to normal salary, it would make sense that base salary should be higher at a non-profit (where stock options don’t exist). Their salary structure also seems much flatter than other non-profits that I saw within the propublica link.
What am I missing here?
We already know it’s a honeypot, this is circumstantial evidence about their role in sapping donations from the wider open source ecosystem. Keep donating to them if you don’t value your money.
We already know it’s a honeypot
Oh?
Yeah that’s why you guys focus on shit like “I was able to convince my grandma to use it” - you don’t understand what is wrong with Signal technically.
No, I focus on that because it’s real. It sounds like you don’t get out much, just judging by how you talk to people. So let me lay it out for you. People are resistant to change and you have to convince them. You aren’t good at that, which is why you’re so mad. I’m trying to get information to help convince people I know and love, which is why I’m asking for more information from the person who seems to know a lot. However you also seem to be bad at providing resources to back your claims up.
No, not everyone who fails to relate to your American experience “fails to get out much”. It’s more than you’re incapable of understanding why someone would avoid centralizing “privacy services” in countries that run the global capitalist surveillance state. What you’re doing is derailing the thread + demanding spoon feeding + begging the question. Your motivation is a wounded ego because someone said you made a bad choice—one that is as easy to fix as installing and uninstalling services.
Removed by mod
Jesus Christ dude. I’m talking about how you are immediately hostile to everyone in this thread. Get over yourself.
Get some good software on your devices that doesn’t have a lifespan according to the goodwill of the feds, and have a wonderful morning.
Can you provide some evidence for your claims? You’ve even linked to another post where you say you’re here to educate people but all I’m seeing are assertions with no basis and insults.
How does this compare to salaries for comparable positions at comparable for-profit companies?
It’s kinda the point of donations that they can afford to hire people whose labor costs that much.
is the argument they shouldn’t be paid money for their work? or maybe signal shouldn’t be hiring at competitive salaries for highly skilled labor?
Well, the only person on the list with “developer” in their title has the lowest salary, the executives are paid more. And you will not in a million years convince me that corporate suits are doing skilled work in a way to deserve more compensation than people actually making the product.
that’s a fair comment I don’t know what they do either.
having seen a few of these org charts this could be much worse. there are 4 salaries related to software and technical improvements of the app and platform.
most ppl underestimate what kind of infrastructure is required to make anything work at planet scale, including auxiliary functions. I’d be much more interested in where the funding is coming from.
Their job is to ensure the nonprofit doesn’t suddenly start making something which can actually help them hide from the US government. Which would be possible since they have the talent.
Well, the only person on the list with “developer” in their title has the lowest salary,
Unsurprisingly.
You should also link Ariadne’s post saying she rather use signal, but that would be against the tone of your post, right?
https://social.treehouse.systems/@ariadne/116043045098562878
Yes, posting wrong opinions would be against the theme of the post, and in fact my account as a whole. That’s pretty standard for programmers who wear bunny suits. If we keep going here one of them is going to show up and post that Soatok person’s blog.
Got it, you’re just here to bait people.
I’m here to educate people, not nitpick people and try to pass off my low standards for “secure software” and US government-dependent NGOs as an interest in sustainable OPSEC.
Ugh. I’ve always liked Matrix (and was not bothered too much by the metadata leaks because my home server was not federated anyways), but after noticing some issues and finally reading up on the actual protocol spec a couple of weeks ago… oof. Yeah. No.
Set up XMPP for now. Works really well and the protocol seems so much saner. Unfortunately, it too has some annoyances that are unacceptable to me in the long term. I’m this close to saying “fuck it” and wasting the next couple of years of my life on a new protocol that no one is gonna use. (Cue the XKCD here.)
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA https://lemmy.ml/comment/24436351
I FUCKING KNEW IT YOU PEOPLE ONLY KNOW THAT ONE BLOG
What blog?
Works really well and the protocol seems so much saner.
Ha, thanks, I’d already read that. And I do, mostly, agree; the OMEMO implementation is not great both from the security perspective discussed in the post, as well as the UX (not being able to decrypt old messages on new devices at all).
That being said, I primarily want a selfhosted, federated messenger which also takes privacy and security seriously, and at least for the former, XMPP is really refreshingly good.
Yeah no shit you already read it they post it every single time. I don’t think any of them have actually read it, the problems he is complaining about were solved ages ago or by two clicks, once. The guy actually argues for people to use Telegram because they have disabilities and software is hard. An absolute masterclass.
I want to point out that the author of that linked blog, Soatok, actually removed a response in the comments from an OMEMO developer which clarified some things, which personally I think was rather odd/bad faith of them to do. When asked about it, this was their response:
“I’ll make an edit later about the protocol version thing, but I’m not interested in having questions answered. My entire horse in this race is for evangelists to f** off and leave me alone. That’s it. That’s all I want.”
According to the OMEMO developer in his response (you can it read here), there’s nothing really wrong with OMEMO 0.3.0, as the dev considers it a stable standard that clients can safely implement, with newer versions basically being public beta releases toward a stable ‘OMEMO 2’ standard that can eventually replace 0.3.0.
I didn’t know about this response, thank you for pointing it out. However, this response fails to address the main criticism of the XMPP+ONEMO:
To understand why this is true, you only need check whether OMEMO is on by default (it isn’t), or whether OMEMO can be turned off even if your client supports it (it can).
Both of these conditions fail the requirements I outlined under the End-to-End Encryption header in that other blog post.
And that’s all that I should have needed to say on the matter.
If someone’s threat model requires absolute always-on encryption, then XMPP does currently fail that standard, but each individual will have to determine if their threat model does infact require that, and contrast it with the potential benefits XMPP currently has compared to the more secure options.
As an example, all of the always-on E2EE alternatives are really only a good alternative to messengers like whatsapp, there is currently no always-on messenger that could potentially replace the feature set of Discord, where as with the XMPP Movim client, that is currently possible due to the recent implementation of Discord-like spaces (single communities/channels with groups of rooms and drop-in chats).
For a discord community or for friends that want discord-like features, XMPP is leagues better for privacy, even though it only has optional encryption. It also offers true a decentralized federated network, which allows for more control of how your encrypted or unencrypted data is shared.
Unfortunately there’s no perfect answer for all messenger needs, so each will need to have their pros and cons weighed on a case by case basis.
I’m this close to saying “fuck it” and wasting the next couple of years of my life on a new protocol that no one is gonna use.
This article does a good job exploring the landscape of text chats, and ultimately finds that XMPP is still our best bet, it just needs some spit and polish.
Funny, I’ve also already read that 😄 Good blog and article.
They’re still far more encrypted than literally every other alternative.
You people have zero awareness of the limitations of your own knowledge.
Name a single Discord replacement that has anywhere close to the coverage of end-to-end encryption that Matrix does. Unless you’re willing to sacrifice literally every other feature except text chat, I don’t think there is one.
Tbf they are probably renting in california lol, their ‘pwese donate we need it’ always felt about as legitimate as 'hello from jimmy at wikipedia, we’re about to shut down the website, everyone please send $1 to the wikipedia guy, 432 evergreen tereace’
What would be the downside if all companies were non-profit? At first sight, it sounds like a great idea.
What would be the downside if the world was made of pudding
It would collapse on itself, unable to carry its own weight, heating up massively. I consider superheated pudding volcanos something of a downside, personally. I cannot reasonably estimate what might happen in the centre of the world, supercritical fluid doesn’t seem enough. Perhaps nanodiamond crystallisation from the organic parts of the pudding? Also lots of hydrogen release, I’d guess.
My suggestions involves only change of the legal framework. Besides, there are non-profit companies. I’m not sure about details, but for example Velux (windows manufacturer) and Carl Zeiss (optics) are supposed to be non-profits, and Anthropic could say no to the DoD because it’s some sort of not-just-for-profit company.
Is that good?
Raising enough money to pay its employees and expand, but not the most you can without regard to anything else? Sonds like an interesting idea to explore. Or are you talking about super-dense pudding?
The pudding, not the mindless bootlicking. I like when you guys try to be funny.
Some companies will be invisible and/or “boring” - nobody ever said: “Oh, I just love my office building’s cleaning supplies delivery contractor, I should donate them again!”
To be fair non-profit doesn’t mean you can’t charge for your services. You just can’t pay profit out as dividends so there’s no incentive to overcharge.
Yes, I understand, but with the same example - I see how people can fing it interesting/motivating building a service like signal, but if I ever opened a b2b household chemistry supply company, I doubt I would be ok if it worked as a nonprofit - what’s in it for me, except money?
Just answering the question: “Why doesn’t everybody move to nonprofit model?”You can still pay yourself a salary. But true, I don’t see why you’d go nonprofit for b2b things. Idea of a nonprofit is usually to benefit the community, by giving customers fair prices instead of skimming a bunch off the top - why bother doing that for b2b when it just increases other businesses margins
The conventional answer is that there would be much less incentive to fund new ones.
Some things need a large investment to start: power plants, cities, factories, space stations, etc. Sometimes more money than the people involved can afford, and you need to ask someone to front the money, they typically get paid with a share of the profits.
Thanks, that sounds very reasonable.
The problem is that NGOs and charities are just a way for capital to manage social stability and will never have that kind of expansiveness. It’s like trying to build socialism by starting worker cooperatives in a bourgeois democracy.
I love signal and use I daily but I will admit the lack of self hosting is the biggest red flag for me. And that the servers are all in USA.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any alternatives that are as readily accessible and easy to set up to others. XMPP I guess is really the best bet for true privacy but a lot of people I talk to would be unable to grasp how to set it up and use it correctly.
Just hire from the EU. It’s cheaper and they are as competent. A lot more money will be left to hire more staff. I’ve already moved my signal donation to matrix.
The US is a money sink.
