We've been setting it up to use with our team. And group chat works great. Except: you can't mute a group chat. You can't mute any single conversation; notifications are all or nothing. Meaning, when you have a big project, your phone is "always buzz" or "never buzz." Meaning it's now useless to me as an SMS type system where I want to know when a single person messages me.
Argh. We are thinking of switching to Whats App. Don't ever let anyone tell you usability is not part of security.
That's a bummer. I also wish that Signal worked better as a Slack-like team tool.
Has the Columbia Journalism School considered sourcing a grant or organizing a fundraiser for Open Whisper Systems? I'm sure they would be interested in making a small change like that, but they have a small team.
Plus, since Signal is apparently gaining traction inside the White House as a tool for leakers to talk to the press, there's always the danger that POTUS will decide that he wants to lead a charge in Congress to cut OWS's funding. Diversifying OWS's funding would be a good start towards mitigating that risk.
Grant is a great idea. I'm not "Columbia Journalism School" -- at least I don't have any control over money -- but there are a few grant programs here that I could submit a proposal to, which I am now looking into.
Awesome. I didn't mean to imply that you single-handedly control the budget or decision making process, I realize that's not how academic departments work.
It would also be great if some of the larger newspapers were able to chip in. They're obviously not flush with cash, these days, but they do pay for Windows licenses, SAAS productivity tools, and other tech they have to pay for. Although, that may be tricky, since I doubt they would be able to write contributions to OWS off as a business expense, seeing as they would be donations. There has to be a way to make that work though.
"GPL, but we bill you if you use the software for commercial purposes..." would be a nice license, hypothetically.