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Beeper acquired by Automattic
161–170 of 310 posts
Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic
#162The Verge reports: > Since then, Beeper has rolled out some security upgrades that change the way the app handles security and prevent Beeper itself from seeing unencrypted messages from Signal, WhatsApp, and other encrypted apps. Screenshots of Beeper’s desktop and mobile apps. How?
Probably on device encryption before anything is sent through their servers
I'm sorry, but that's not an answer. WhatsApp encrypts the message E2E, and then Beeper is bridging it into Matrix. The only way this would make any sense is if they've bridged E2E all the way through to ... the clients? Like, it doesn't make any sense.
Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably on device encryption before anything is sent through their servers
I'm sorry, but that's not an answer. WhatsApp encrypts the message E2E, and then Beeper is bridging it into Matrix. The only way this would make any sense is if they've bridged E2E all the way through to ... the clients? Like, it doesn't make any sense.
It's a journalist's take, they probably mean that Bleeper doesn't phone home the messages from the client.
Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Exciting day for Beeper! Congratulations on your successful exit, but is it actually an exciting day for Beeper? Your product has been assimilated into something of a behemoth, whose goals (in spite of the text of your announcement) aren't necessarily those of a free and open internet through open communication protocols. Do you foresee a five-year timeline in which anti-monopoly legislation forces an opening up of…
If you've followed Beeper, you know that roughly 50% of our product is already open source ( https://github.com/beeper ). You can run your own Matrix server and use our bridges, or self-host the bridges and use Beeper clients ( https://github.com/beeper/bridge-manager ). For all intents and purposes, Beeper _is_ the rejuvenated and very open Pidgin. Automattic is a fantastic home for us. We needed a home (or new inve…
> Automattic is a fantastic home for us. We needed a home (or new investors) to keep working on Beeper.
Is the added investment necessary to scale out specific features, or is it to address challenges related to profitability?
Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Exciting day for Beeper! Congratulations on your successful exit, but is it actually an exciting day for Beeper? Your product has been assimilated into something of a behemoth, whose goals (in spite of the text of your announcement) aren't necessarily those of a free and open internet through open communication protocols. Do you foresee a five-year timeline in which anti-monopoly legislation forces an opening up of…
If you've followed Beeper, you know that roughly 50% of our product is already open source ( https://github.com/beeper ). You can run your own Matrix server and use our bridges, or self-host the bridges and use Beeper clients ( https://github.com/beeper/bridge-manager ). For all intents and purposes, Beeper _is_ the rejuvenated and very open Pidgin. Automattic is a fantastic home for us. We needed a home (or new inve…
> 50% of our product is already open source
What parts are closed source? Are there any plans to open them up?
Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic
#166The hopeless romantic in me is hoping the real reason Automattic acquired them was actually to get some useful developer documentation written for the Beepy.
Given how bad the WordPress documentation is, it's a weird hope to have from that company.
Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic
#167[deleted]
Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic
#168Smart of Beeper to accept an acquisition/exit as soon as possible before their product gets further eroded by non-public APIs they're reliant on. Tough to build a business where at any time your product can get wiped out by Apple/Meta.
I agree it must be a engineering nightmare, a whatsapp/imessage update and your app is gone.
Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic
#169Do you plan on continuing contributing to open source, or is Automattic going to dictate your business plan and Beeper will be enshittified?
Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic
#170>If you haven’t heard of Beeper before, welcome! We make a universal chat app – one app to send and receive messages on 14 different chat networks. I feel a little exhausted just thinking about needing to be on 14 different chat networks. What are people using that for? Marketing / customer service type chat stuff across networks?
> I feel a little exhausted just thinking about needing to be on 14 different chat networks. That's the point, the vision is that you should only have to be on Beeper.
And you don't have to convince everyone in your life to switch to The Messenger. You can just have it.