I'm new to using all the new chat programs and LOVE the idea of matrix, but was somewhat surprised to learn there isn't a bridge for Signal, since it's open source. Is there a reason and/or any possibility of it happening. The linux Signal desktop client is too resource intensive and it would be amazing to be able to use WeeChat.

Moxie has been very anti-federation when it comes to Signal for a few years[0] (while I disagree with his reasons, he is right that having a centralised system does make it easier to make protocol changes without splintering your user-base).

There is a Signal bridge[1], but it's incredibly hacky (it does some ungodly things with JavaScript to re-use the Signal Chrome App) and requires you to register Signal for a device and then use the linked device configuration to get messages. Personally that's far from ideal, and I think a better solution would be to actually set up a full-on fake device with signal-cli[2] (an unofficial wrapper around the Signal Java library) and then forward things.

Unfortunately, Signal bridges would necessarily have to man-in-the-middle your messages (breaking a lot of the benefits of the Signal crypto). You could forward the messages to an encrypted chat, but you still have a fairly big issue -- especially for shared homeservers. So you'd probably need to run your own homeserver and then you get into a lot more fun.

[0]: https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37 [1]: https://github.com/matrix-hacks/matrix-puppet-signal [2]: https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli