Not a good look. But the alternative is untenable. I won’t lose sleep over AI being used for a popular GPL’d privacy project in the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing.
I’ve spoken to Jason about this. Since he is a senior developer who’s been involved in the project’s core since the start, I don’t expect him to lower his standards on cryptography. That’s not to say that Session’s cryptography isn’t hiding some strange decisions. But that’s the more reason for a rewrite to achieve PFS and PQ.
Development “opening up” entails a lowering of the barrier for outside contributions. The requirement for cross-platform feature parity has been a blocker for anyone trying to submit MRs, and there’s certainly been an aspect of pride & tunnel vision stopping outside contributions up till now (see my previous posts in this thread).
With how the code will be structured going forward, it should allow others to build bots, custom clients, change the UI across platforms more easily than ever before… That’s not a guarantee features will be accepted, but I trust Jason will want to put some time aside to review new contributors’ work within in a year or so. I’m hoping that this change in Session’s stewardship will be supported by the rest of the STF. (No clue if I’ll still be around by then!)
I know I’m praising Jason a lot here. But even the author of this scathing 2024 blog post (who happens to be the ex-contributor mentioned in the update video) agreed that Jason was THE person who could merge outside code. My experience is similar, even if a bit less fortunate; I just maintain some forks and auxiliary projects.