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uTox – Free, Secure Instant Messaging

utox.org

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Re: uTox – Free, Secure Instant Messaging

#51

Post by blucoat »

Something to keep in mind:

Of all Tox clients, uTox is written in C, using its own UI framework that directly interfaces with X11 and WinAPI. This makes the code itself a mess. The reasoning behind this is that it's somewhat of a meme on /g/ that anything but pure C code is "bloat". I tried contributing a bit last year, did some work on copy/pasting inline images, and found a remote code execution vuln. Then I got fed up with how terribly confusing the codebase was for something so simple. I'm not a professional programmer or anything, just a student, but it seems like it's the same for everyone else in the project.

Re: uTox – Free, Secure Instant Messaging

#52

Post by adwf »

detaro wrote: post #37
adwf wrote: post #7

I've been using this for the last 6 months or so. Seems pretty good as a client. Stable on the comms side, although short of an audit, I'm just having faith in the security side of things. What it really needs is some way of having a roaming profile though. Currently you have to have multiple accounts, one for each device. So my friends list has a lot of duplicates depending on whether they're on their work computer,…

Yeah, way to many messengers seem to assume "Well, everyone has just 1 phone anyways, and where else would you want to use a messenger". I get that desktop clients etc are not the first thing on the priority list, but still it is very annoying (and the first one which gets that right I'm pushing everybody to.) (Threema actually recommends a workaround: "Just create a groupchat for each of your contacts with all your…

Thanks, that's a good workaround, I'll try it tomorrow. It should still be a default thing if they want mainstream adoption though.

Re: uTox – Free, Secure Instant Messaging

#53

Post by lawl »

astonex wrote: post #49
lawl wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying your lying or anything. But if you make accusations like that you should probably back them up with a chat log.

Chat logs of which bit are you after?

Preferably a few hours from the last time you said something or 24 hours back.

Re: uTox – Free, Secure Instant Messaging

#54

Post by steveklabnik »

Jfreegman wrote: post #36
chc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rust only recently hit 1.0, so it's pretty obvious why somebody would not have built their software using that.

Also, current benchmarks show Rust to be about ~3x slower than C, making it more comparable to Go or Java.

A few months back, we were beating C on some benchmarks, though with the focus on semantics for 1.0, I'm sure there were some regressions.

Re: uTox – Free, Secure Instant Messaging

#55

Post by Veratyr »

I like the idea of Tox but there are a couple issues that make it unusable for most users (at least me and a few I've talked to about it):

- No push notifications of any kind, meaning mobile devices have to keep a connection open (kill their batteries) or poll for updates (and get the message later).

- No multiple device support, so I can't use my phone _and_ my desktop. I have to pick.

It'll be great when it's been polished up and completed a bit more but it's not there yet.

Re: uTox – Free, Secure Instant Messaging

#56

Post by belorn »

yellowapple wrote: post #22
thomasfl wrote: post #2

Would be cool ta have FOSS iOS apps made with this.

Part of the issue is that both uTox and toxcore are GPLv3'd, which forbids "TiVoization" (and therefore makes it legally difficult to release on, say, the App Store). A more permissive license would make that more plausible.

While TiVoization would be a problem in the App Store, but its actually all the other details regarding the App Store which really prohibits using them for distribution.

First off, the App Store agreement explicitly prohibit users to further distribute any software which is distributed through the store. This makes any "copyleft" licenses a no-deal in there since distribution is a defining attribute of those licenses.

Second, as a matter of policy, Apple forbids developers to put any GPL software in the store.

If you would dare to break the App Store agreement and the apple policy for developer, then at that point GPLv3 TiVoization clause would indeed make it further legally difficult. I would however be more concerned about being chased by apple's lawyers, so as a general advice I would be careful and make sure that any licensed software you upload is compatible with both the agreement and policy. It doesn't matter if it is permissive, copyleft, or closed source.

Re: uTox – Free, Secure Instant Messaging

#57

Post by [deleted] »

tetrep wrote: post #9

I wonder if we'll ever get to the point where projects start advertising what methods they use to weed out memory management bugs (i.e. static analysis, fuzzing, etc) because an adversary that can execute arbitrary code on my machine is far more intimidating than one that can eavesdrop (imo).

[deleted]

Re: uTox – Free, Secure Instant Messaging

#58

Post by Sir_Substance »

lewisl9029 wrote: post #24
Sir_Substance wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a big fan of accountless systems, but utox does need to solve the roaming profile issue. It simply cannot be used in the real world until they nut that one.

Definitely a crucial feature, but a difficult one for any truly distributed application. I'm actually prototyping a similar distributed messaging app using remotestorage.io to try to tackle this issue of profile roaming and persistence. In theory it should allow profiles to live in the cloud (in any backend supported by remotestorage, such as Dropbox, Google Drive, and ofc remotestorage servers) and be sync'd automat…

>Definitely a crucial feature, but a difficult one for any truly distributed application.

I actually don't see why it need be for a messaging app. I guess it depends on the features you are trying to move with the profile, but I just want a single address people can send messages to.

I'm happy to reconstruct the profile (name, timezone etc.) on the other device, but I'll never persuade my friends and family to use it if they have to guess which one of 5 devices I am using each time they want to send me a message, and a messaging service that my friends and family won't use is useless to me.

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