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Beeper acquired by Automattic

blog.beeper.com

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Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic

#211

Post by gkoberger »

throwaway6e8f wrote: post #208

This is an odd match, and at a time when the strategic value of Beeper seems to be very low. > Matt, Automattic’s CEO, and I have known each other for years Could it perhaps be a favor for a friend to give a plausible reason for ejecting from the business without admitting failure?

Sure, but Automattic also bought Texts.com... this seems to be part of a bigger strategy on their part.

Even friends don't spend $150M on friends for no reason. Automattic is doing well, but they don't have $150M to drop (plus future salaries, hosting, etc) just to help someone save face.

Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic

#213

Post by tylerritchie »

snowfield wrote: post #199
mintplant wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can host the bridges yourself: https://github.com/beeper/bridge-manager

Still won't be E2E as per their FAQ

that FAQ is accurate but (rightly) doesn't cover high-security deployments.

if I'm running the bridges local-to-the-client (I am, on my McBook) it's not meaningfully any less e2ee. encryption happens in the matrix client (running on the laptop), the encrypted message is sent to the homeserver on localhost, the bridge (on localhost) grabs the encrypted message and decrypts it, then the bridge re-encrypts it and sends it to Whatsapp (or wherever). the content of the message is as secure over the wire with this approach as using first-party apps directly

if one hosts their own bridges they're person-in-the-middling themselves and should take all the necessary precautions. if they're using beeper's hosted options they have to delegate read/write ability to beeper (though I think the signal and imessage bridges might be device-local), and beeper is clear about that.

Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic

#215

Post by dqv »

theogravity wrote: post #200
kevstev wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This idea has existed and been implemented for a very long time- Pidgin was the first client I can remember that would try to bridge across various chat networks. You likely are on 14 different chat "networks" already- you might not think of them as chat networks, but as apps with chat functionality. Just real quick off the top of my head I can name a bunch: FB Instagram Twitter WhatsApp Telegram Signal Gchat/whateve…

Trillian was my first client. It looks like it still exists and now runs on a subscription model: https://trillian.im/ Also looks like it no longer connects to multiple networks, but uses their own now.

You can still add XMPP accounts, but that's all.

Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic

#217

Post by agile-gift0262 »

snowfield wrote: post #199
mintplant wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can host the bridges yourself: https://github.com/beeper/bridge-manager

Still won't be E2E as per their FAQ

But at least you are in control of the computer where the decryption and re-encryption is happening.

They usually call it E2B (end to bridge)

Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic

#218

Post by qingcharles »

joenot443 wrote: post #38
rchaud wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Automattic big enough to achieve that? You'd think they would be making a pretty penny from Wordpress.com and Tumblr, but these days you wouldn't pick either one over the competition (Wix, Squarespace Threads, IG etc).

I still choose WP over Wix or SquareSpace when given the option. Self hosting a bunch of WP sites on a DigitalOcean instance and mirroring them all through CloudFlare is probably the cheapest way to run high traffic read-only sites. Toss in ServerPilot and you can spin up sites about as quickly as you could doing the Wix onboarding. My prediction is that by 2030 Wordpress will be just as popular as it is today :)

In the past I would have argued against you, but the WP block editor has taken away most of the advantage that Wix/SquareSpace had. I've done the same as you now. You can buy a $3/mo Hetzner ARM box and run 100 WP sites on it.

Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic

#219

Post by xinayder »

erohead wrote: post #65
gwerbret wrote: post #62

Earlier 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…

Since now you have more resources, do you plan on open sourcing your whole solution, or will Beeper still be "half" open source? As far as I'm aware you still cannot use the Beeper client with your own self-hosted Matrix instance, and there's quite a lot of Beeper-only features that never became Matrix spec proposals. Is there a plan to make these features available to the whole Matrix ecosystem? Should I be worried that open source development of the mautrix bridges will cease, to focus on a commercial product?

Re: Beeper acquired by Automattic

#220

Post by xinayder »

thoughtpeddler wrote: post #195

How much of this is a long-term bet that the US DOJ's antitrust case against Apple (at least the iMessage-specific argument) will result in the forced opening up of the platform, such that Beeper (now Automattic) will sustainably function?

Is it really anti-trust if you reverse engineered something (deliberately breaking the ToS of said service - Apple can suspend your accounts for doing so) while said service ToS, a contract you sign when you use their service, explicitly forbids reverse engineering?
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