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Wire open-sourced

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Re: Wire open-sourced

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using it with friends and family for awhile on Android and macOS and it's fantastic, in theory. It has however been plagued with lots of bugs. The calling functionality, which I've used a lot, often stalls at "joining" and then nothing happens. It's not as polished or flawless as Telegram. It does not have a feature to compress video before sending for instance. But I can only expect that to change. Especia…

Compress video before sending is there on mobile (at least on iOS, I need to double check Android, don't have that handy right now).

Please do, I just tried sending a 100 MB video file recorded with the stock camera and I got a message saying "Are you sure you want to send 100 MB via the mobile network?"

Re: Wire open-sourced

#103
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This phone routing story keeps getting repeated here but it's not true and never was. The devices share a key but are completely independent. You can easily try it, put your phone into airplane mode and Signal-Desktop works just the same.

Issue may not be the routing, but that a mobile device is required to create an account. Are you saying that the Signal Protocol created Open Whisper Systems, which is lead by Moxie Marlinspike, does not require a phone number to work? (Say the Signal Protocol instead of the browser extension since the browser extension uses the protocol to work.)

As far as I'm aware the protocol can use other identifiers. If I remember correctly the development server allows registering without a phone number for easier testing of Signal-Desktop. Not sure what is used as an identifier instead. Not sure where I read it, so it may be the result of the telephone game. Take this with a grain of salt.

Re: Wire open-sourced

#104
post #96
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what you're definition of "true multi device" is, but Signal Desktop does not do phone routing and functions whether your mobile device has connectivity or not: https://whispersystems.org/blog/signal-desktop-public/

Thanks, I thought it did phone routing, mostly because the Signal FAQ lists some odd restrictions on multi device usage (e.g. desktop can't be linked to the iOS app, cannot have iPad and iOS at the same time [1] [1]: http://support.whispersystems.org/hc/en-us/articles/21324092...

That's a limitation of the iOS client. It doesn't support multi-device yet.

Re: Wire open-sourced

#105

I found a file that is available as either MIT or GPL. Or is it only available under a union of the terms of both licenses? An intersection? Who knows, IANAL. https://github.com/wireapp/wire-webapp/blob/0cf9bf4/aws/main... Why do people copy the license all over the place like that?

MIT has one condition: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

As the code include this, the author who distribute the code can thus prove in court that they are compliant with the wishes of the author/s of the MIT licensed software.

The added GPL means that copies of this specific version also adds additional conditions that those distributing this version also need to follow. This mean in practice that they need to follow the GPL license and include the MIT copyright notice as stated above, in order to follow all the different authors wishes. Thankfully, MIT and GPL is compatible, so none of the conditions are contradicting with each other.

Re: Wire open-sourced

#106
post #33

Didn't see that coming. I think Wire is struggling to get new users and this move could put them on the map.

We've actually nicely accelerated user growth this year. Going the OS route was always the plan, especially given the target audience of hacktavists, human rights organizations, journalists. Open source is tablestakes to be taken seriously. It's also just one of the steps towards more transparency.

I tried installing it and only had a single contact show up. And it turns out that contact had long since uninstalled the app (said it was very unreliable), but the server was still showing her as registered.

From the app store numbers, it looks like Wire is still not even to a million monthly active users. For a funded app with a large full time staff and generous marketing budget, that's a pretty terrible sign several years after launching. I know that the founders are rich, but why would they continue funding an app that isn't showing adoption?

Re: Wire open-sourced

#107
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've actually nicely accelerated user growth this year. Going the OS route was always the plan, especially given the target audience of hacktavists, human rights organizations, journalists. Open source is tablestakes to be taken seriously. It's also just one of the steps towards more transparency.

I tried installing it and only had a single contact show up. And it turns out that contact had long since uninstalled the app (said it was very unreliable), but the server was still showing her as registered. From the app store numbers, it looks like Wire is still not even to a million monthly active users. For a funded app with a large full time staff and generous marketing budget, that's a pretty terrible sign seve…

One privacy advantage of Wire is that it does not force you to upload your address book to their server.

Re: Wire open-sourced

#108
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried installing it and only had a single contact show up. And it turns out that contact had long since uninstalled the app (said it was very unreliable), but the server was still showing her as registered. From the app store numbers, it looks like Wire is still not even to a million monthly active users. For a funded app with a large full time staff and generous marketing budget, that's a pretty terrible sign seve…

One privacy advantage of Wire is that it does not force you to upload your address book to their server.

I didn't see that option, but either way the fact remains that even after several years, nobody is using the app. As a business with a large full time staff that needs considerable ongoing capital to continue, the numbers do not bode well for its future.

Maybe being open source will change that, but I can't see it being a significant factor for the hundreds of millions of users they need to even begin to catch up. I think they were betting on end to end encryption to save them, but their biggest competitor launched better end to end encryption by default before they could.

Re: Wire open-sourced

#109
Sorry if I've missed it somewhere but I'm looking for some independent, transparent reports on its security implementation. I was wondering if anyone could help me with finding this - or if perhaps they haven't been done I guess that would answer my question?
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