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Briar is in maintenance mode

briarproject.org

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Re: Briar is in maintenance mode

#2

Post by pogue »

Sounds like it's basically dead. The issue with messenger apps is that they're a dime a dozen, there are so many of them and they offer so much variability in security, privacy, but most importantly usability and uptime. If your friends won't switch to them, there's almost no point in having them or using them.

Re: Briar is in maintenance mode

#4

Post by rvz »

This is what happens when no-one pays for their tools and I expect this to happen when more software becomes AI assisted.

The truth is donations do not work for tiny open source projects in the long term and even when Briar was quietly building for many years, it is clear that it is not enough.

Re: Briar is in maintenance mode

#6

Post by unethical_ban »

It's really sad that both Apple and Google make it so difficult for background processes to run with user consent. The app wasn't even available for iOS because they don't allow apps to listen for messages outside the walled garden's polling service.

Briar is a messenger app that worked on local networks, over Bluetooth, and over Tor if traveling the Internet. Fully encrypted and the purpose was decentralized, serverless messaging.

I liked the concept, and tested it out a little on my Android devices. But it looked straight out of 2009, and it had the issues described in the post. Still. Thanks for the work. I hope it can get revived or inspire others some day.

P.S. feature request! If Alice, Bob and Charlie are all contacts with each other, and Alice writes an offline message to Charlie, Alice should be able to opportunisticly hand the encrypted message to Bob on their shared network, and Bob can deliver it to Charlie.

Re: Briar is in maintenance mode

#8

Post by embedding-shape »

pogue wrote: post #2

Sounds like it's basically dead. The issue with messenger apps is that they're a dime a dozen, there are so many of them and they offer so much variability in security, privacy, but most importantly usability and uptime. If your friends won't switch to them, there's almost no point in having them or using them.

For most IMs I agree, Briar is/was slightly different though, being P2P and E2E encrypted. There isn't many IMs out there supporting Bluetooth connections between users for example.

Re: Briar is in maintenance mode

#9

Post by raybb »

embedding-shape wrote: post #8
pogue wrote: post #2

Sounds like it's basically dead. The issue with messenger apps is that they're a dime a dozen, there are so many of them and they offer so much variability in security, privacy, but most importantly usability and uptime. If your friends won't switch to them, there's almost no point in having them or using them.

For most IMs I agree, Briar is/was slightly different though, being P2P and E2E encrypted. There isn't many IMs out there supporting Bluetooth connections between users for example.

Anyone have an idea how good https://qaul.net/ is?

I saw it shared at dweb camp and it seemed like a pretty long term serious project for P2P.

Re: Briar is in maintenance mode

#10

Post by hermanzegerman »

rvz wrote: post #4

This is what happens when no-one pays for their tools and I expect this to happen when more software becomes AI assisted. The truth is donations do not work for tiny open source projects in the long term and even when Briar was quietly building for many years, it is clear that it is not enough.

I doubt that Briar saw much usage at all.
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