Unofficial Rumors: Signal thinks about introducing premium features like cloud backups

If open projects always rely only on donations, we will never get anywhere. Sure it must be done decently, but if done right the projects thrive and users are happy. One good example is Ente (Photos). If they relied on donations they would already be gone. Instead they have paid plans and could develop some more advanced stuff and thanks to that even getting a big grant from Mozzila.

Maybe they should start by implementing long-overdue basic backup features like incremental backups, allowing to be backed up by the OS’s backup solution or allowing to change backup intervals, before offering cloud backups. Also allowing to store media automatically outside of the app’s private space would be great for overall usability.

All of these, plus allowing backups without media, plus allowing backup and restore across different platforms

I know of a feature that people might want to pay for: the ability to create and use Signal accounts that aren’t tied to phone numbers! They can kill two (three?) birds with one stone there:

  1. Give users a feature they’ve been requesting for years
  2. Make money from that feature to sustain Signal’s operations
  3. Eliminate marginal spending on SMS auth/verification

This would be a win all around.

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