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Every time I see "GNU" I fear that it'll be more about "freedom" than actual functionality. Is the product actually any good (or at least on par with Skype, Han

Every time I see "GNU" I fear that it'll be more about "freedom" than actual functionality. Is the product actually any good (or at least on par with Skype, Hangouts, etc) or is this just something for free software fans to brag about with no productive use-case?

corobo 9y ago
You've been downvoted but what you've said isn't wrong. For example > Each RingID has 40 characters picture an md5 string but with 40chrs to imagine what your userid looks like. Yes, you need to supply this userid to others for them to contact you. > We haven't had time to add contact managing features (adding, editing, etc.) to Ring yet as its not the priority in the alpha stage Dust off the old rolodex for those 40 character strings, there's no way to save your contacts. > The Ring OpenDHT network is new and it may take up to a few minutes to discover Ring nodes around and reach your partner's machine. It can take minutes to set up a call. Long distance phonecalls in the 80s were faster > Ring can usually reach computers behind a NAT provided that you have checked the Allow UPnP setting So no corporate use then.
- Rjevski 9y ago
  The long user ID is a side effect of how (I assume) the protocol works - essentially the user ID is a public key. However they can easily fix this by offering an official "directory" which allows you to sign up by email/username and stores the username->user ID mapping. It'll allow people who want UX to use this while leaving the use of raw user IDs if people don't want to depend on a central directory server. For the other issues it's very surprising that Skype (which used to be a P2P protocol) managed to solve them like 10 years ago and yet the Ring people still can't (or don't want to) solve those issues. But hey, freedom is more important than UX so screw it.
  - bigato 9y ago
    Skype didn't have unbreakable privacy as a main concern, this comment is not very fair
    - Rjevski 9y ago
      The problem is, there's little market for "unbreakable privacy" and that market is already taken by Signal, Threema, etc.. - however since Skype turned to shit there's been a huge market for an easy to use and ubiquitous chat solution. For now the only thing that comes close to that is iMessage but it's Mac-only.
      - seanp2k2 9y ago
        Facebook has video chat and lots of nontechnical people get how to use it. Google has had one for a while but the name keeps changing and they'll likely kill off whatever the latest one is in a year (and it probably works better on android somehow) Sucks that we can't just revive the design of classic Skype (but open source) before MS ruined it (not that it didn't have wiretapping capabilities before as well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype_security https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype_security ). I guess the linked project is the closest thing to that.
      - ausjke 9y ago
        was wondering the same thing, i.e. signal might be doing it already for most users?
    - s73ver 9y ago
      I think it's extremely fair. "Unbreakable privacy" doesn't much matter if no one wants to use the system.
  - greenshackle2 9y ago
    > However they can easily fix this by offering an official "directory" which allows you to sign up by email/username and stores the username This is already the case, you can associate your ID with a user name. Perhaps their FAQ should be updated. EDIT: It's mentioned in the announcement: > Support of an Ethereum blockchain as a distributed public user database
    - Rjevski 9y ago
      So here we are again, using yet another obscure technology for a very simple problem solved years ago: a key value store. Will I have to pay with ETH to have an username linked to my ID?
      - moosingin3space 9y ago
        A decentralized key-value store that is tolerant to an active adversary is not a "very simple problem". A block-chain is actually a reasonable solution for this, see [1]. Not to say it's perfect, for sure. [1]: http://blog.printf.net/articles/2015/05/29/announcing-gittorrent-a-decentralized-github/ http://blog.printf.net/articles/2015/05/29/announcing-gittor...
        greenshackle2 9y ago
        Thanks, was about to say. If there is a simple, non-obscure solution to this problem, I'd like to know what it is.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- ololsolol 9y ago
  > Each RingID has 40 characters To by-pass the 40 char ID you can use the name registration system offered by Ring and register a username as you like. The option is available at the account creation and in the settings. you can also use a QRcode on android > We haven't had time to add contact managing features (adding, editing, etc.) to Ring yet as its not the priority in the alpha stage The contacts are are present as an internal funtion in Ring, only external sources of contacts are not supported yet. > The Ring OpenDHT network is new and it may take up to a few minutes to discover Ring nodes around and reach your partner's machine. It is a worst case scenario, usually takes 10 seconds > Ring can usually reach computers behind a NAT provided that you have checked the Allow UPnP setting It also works without uPnP but with less quality (using STUN or TURN)
  - corobo 9y ago
    Fair enough, I didn't get that far. I saw the RingID part of the FAQ and backed out of giving it a go thinking ICQ and that sort of user interaction died in the early 2000s re: your edit - if there are answers to these problems the FAQ really could do with an update
  - jamix 9y ago
    Who's paying for the TURN traffic?
- phkahler 9y ago
  >> Dust off the old rolodex for those 40 character strings, there's no way to save your contacts. This has me thinking that IDs could be images. And by images I mean QR codes, or better yet something like the little symbols used on stack overflow. In fact, how about a QR code that is your public key? Now you can send someone your key via a single image rather than copy/pasting a bunch of gibberish. The key image could also contain a fancy border or an actual photo above the QR of the key. So then if you text someone your image/QR and they add that to their contacts, any app that can access the contact info can also get your public key. Just thinking out loud, er... in text. And more thinking.. This does not address management of your private key at all.
  - Too 9y ago
    Facebook messenger has a round profile photo with some kind of circle with a coded pattern in it around the photo. I never tried to scan one but I assume you can.
    - btym 9y ago
      Snapchat does the same. If you point its camera at someone's profile icon, it will pop up on your phone so you can add them.
    - cyphar 9y ago
      Twidere (the free software microblogging client app) supports a similar notion (though I couldn't scan the QR code when I tried.
- nvarsj 9y ago
  OP was downvoted because he didn't provide any valid criticism. Just FUD about GNU. Your post was much better.
- gaius_baltar 9y ago
  > Each RingID has 40 characters We can't escape this because the canonical user ID is a public key (IMHO, that's a good thing) however there are some ways to transfer this information easily among users -- copy and paste is trivial and so are QR-codes (which are also nice for face-to-face authentication, but making them obligatory as in Brian is counter-productive). Tox solved this by having an optional DNS-based username registration system. Not completely distributed, but decentralized and no harder to use than an email address -- with a bonus that it may be an actual email address for people and organizations with their own domain. Is somewhat sad Tox didn't got used, it was pretty advanced even years ago.
  - nunobrito 9y ago
    Indeed was expecting to see Tox moving forward. Instead, we see yet another decentralized messenger that will end up repeating the same as the former. Rinse and repeat in a couple of years.. :(
- h1d 9y ago
  They should put effort on the internals. Maybe if it's great, someone else might come and build a decent UI.
w8rbt 9y ago
I'm not sure this is always true. GNU Coreutils offer much more functionality and are preferred by many for this reason.
_delirium 9y ago
Odd, that's not my experience with GNU software. On a regular basis I use GNU Emacs, GNU R, gimp, and gcc, among other things, and while all have flaws, I don't feel that they're just things for free software fans to brag about without having productive use cases. I certainly use them to get real work done.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dsacco 9y ago
  I feel the parent was referring to new projects released under the GNU banner, not software that is decades old and highly stable.
  - kronos29296 9y ago
    Some examples maybe? Haven't been in touch with any new GNU projects.
- Rjevski 9y ago
  You are a technical user and most of those products are aimed at technical users so that's fine - even in the proprietary world I don't expect a tech app to be easy to use. However here we're talking about a chat client - something that should be easy to use by anyone, including your grandma. And so far, GNU and similar free software projects have failed to ship anything usable by a non-technical user. Finally, GCC or GIMP doesn't fail because not many people use it whereas a chat client fades into irrelevance if nobody uses it, so even the tech people will abandon it. Take a look at Mozilla - despite being free and open source they nailed their UX. Go to https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/new/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/new/ and notice how there's no mention of "open source" nor "mailing list" nor "./configure && make". Instead there's a list of reasons an average user would like to use it and a download button that gives you a ready to use binary.
  - remir 9y ago
    Voilà. I think a big problem in software dev is that technical people struggle to think like non-technical people. They can't put themselves in the shoes of their grandma or "Joe Six Pack". I mean, just look at the download page for Spotify on Linux. "repository signing keys", "keyserver", "sudo apt-get". I can see a non-technical person thinking: "WTF is that? Where's the installer? Where's the DMG file?" I remember an argument with someone on IRC about Linux and the person actually said that everybody should learn commands and those who don't are simply lazy and dumb. This mentality is problematic and toxic for the cause of FOSS.
MichaelMoser123 9y ago
Without gcc (also GNU) you wouldn't hear much at all (about open source software) ...

corobo 9y ago

You've been downvoted but what you've said isn't wrong. For example > Each RingID has 40 characters picture an md5 string but with 40chrs to imagine what your userid looks like. Yes, you need to supply this userid to others for them to contact you. > We haven't had time to add contact managing features (adding, editing, etc.) to Ring yet as its not the priority in the alpha stage Dust off the old rolodex for those 40 character strings, there's no way to save your contacts. > The Ring OpenDHT network is new and it may take up to a few minutes to discover Ring nodes around and reach your partner's machine. It can take minutes to set up a call. Long distance phonecalls in the 80s were faster > Ring can usually reach computers behind a NAT provided that you have checked the Allow UPnP setting So no corporate use then.

Rjevski 9y ago
The long user ID is a side effect of how (I assume) the protocol works - essentially the user ID is a public key. However they can easily fix this by offering an official "directory" which allows you to sign up by email/username and stores the username->user ID mapping. It'll allow people who want UX to use this while leaving the use of raw user IDs if people don't want to depend on a central directory server. For the other issues it's very surprising that Skype (which used to be a P2P protocol) managed to solve them like 10 years ago and yet the Ring people still can't (or don't want to) solve those issues. But hey, freedom is more important than UX so screw it.
- bigato 9y ago
  Skype didn't have unbreakable privacy as a main concern, this comment is not very fair
  - Rjevski 9y ago
    The problem is, there's little market for "unbreakable privacy" and that market is already taken by Signal, Threema, etc.. - however since Skype turned to shit there's been a huge market for an easy to use and ubiquitous chat solution. For now the only thing that comes close to that is iMessage but it's Mac-only.
    - seanp2k2 9y ago
      Facebook has video chat and lots of nontechnical people get how to use it. Google has had one for a while but the name keeps changing and they'll likely kill off whatever the latest one is in a year (and it probably works better on android somehow) Sucks that we can't just revive the design of classic Skype (but open source) before MS ruined it (not that it didn't have wiretapping capabilities before as well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype_security https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype_security ). I guess the linked project is the closest thing to that.
    - ausjke 9y ago
      was wondering the same thing, i.e. signal might be doing it already for most users?
  - s73ver 9y ago
    I think it's extremely fair. "Unbreakable privacy" doesn't much matter if no one wants to use the system.
- greenshackle2 9y ago
  > However they can easily fix this by offering an official "directory" which allows you to sign up by email/username and stores the username This is already the case, you can associate your ID with a user name. Perhaps their FAQ should be updated. EDIT: It's mentioned in the announcement: > Support of an Ethereum blockchain as a distributed public user database
  - Rjevski 9y ago
    So here we are again, using yet another obscure technology for a very simple problem solved years ago: a key value store. Will I have to pay with ETH to have an username linked to my ID?
    - moosingin3space 9y ago
      A decentralized key-value store that is tolerant to an active adversary is not a "very simple problem". A block-chain is actually a reasonable solution for this, see [1]. Not to say it's perfect, for sure. [1]: http://blog.printf.net/articles/2015/05/29/announcing-gittorrent-a-decentralized-github/ http://blog.printf.net/articles/2015/05/29/announcing-gittor...
      - greenshackle2 9y ago
        Thanks, was about to say. If there is a simple, non-obscure solution to this problem, I'd like to know what it is.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
ololsolol 9y ago
> Each RingID has 40 characters To by-pass the 40 char ID you can use the name registration system offered by Ring and register a username as you like. The option is available at the account creation and in the settings. you can also use a QRcode on android > We haven't had time to add contact managing features (adding, editing, etc.) to Ring yet as its not the priority in the alpha stage The contacts are are present as an internal funtion in Ring, only external sources of contacts are not supported yet. > The Ring OpenDHT network is new and it may take up to a few minutes to discover Ring nodes around and reach your partner's machine. It is a worst case scenario, usually takes 10 seconds > Ring can usually reach computers behind a NAT provided that you have checked the Allow UPnP setting It also works without uPnP but with less quality (using STUN or TURN)
- corobo 9y ago
  Fair enough, I didn't get that far. I saw the RingID part of the FAQ and backed out of giving it a go thinking ICQ and that sort of user interaction died in the early 2000s re: your edit - if there are answers to these problems the FAQ really could do with an update
- jamix 9y ago
  Who's paying for the TURN traffic?
phkahler 9y ago
>> Dust off the old rolodex for those 40 character strings, there's no way to save your contacts. This has me thinking that IDs could be images. And by images I mean QR codes, or better yet something like the little symbols used on stack overflow. In fact, how about a QR code that is your public key? Now you can send someone your key via a single image rather than copy/pasting a bunch of gibberish. The key image could also contain a fancy border or an actual photo above the QR of the key. So then if you text someone your image/QR and they add that to their contacts, any app that can access the contact info can also get your public key. Just thinking out loud, er... in text. And more thinking.. This does not address management of your private key at all.
- Too 9y ago
  Facebook messenger has a round profile photo with some kind of circle with a coded pattern in it around the photo. I never tried to scan one but I assume you can.
  - btym 9y ago
    Snapchat does the same. If you point its camera at someone's profile icon, it will pop up on your phone so you can add them.
  - cyphar 9y ago
    Twidere (the free software microblogging client app) supports a similar notion (though I couldn't scan the QR code when I tried.
nvarsj 9y ago
OP was downvoted because he didn't provide any valid criticism. Just FUD about GNU. Your post was much better.
gaius_baltar 9y ago
> Each RingID has 40 characters We can't escape this because the canonical user ID is a public key (IMHO, that's a good thing) however there are some ways to transfer this information easily among users -- copy and paste is trivial and so are QR-codes (which are also nice for face-to-face authentication, but making them obligatory as in Brian is counter-productive). Tox solved this by having an optional DNS-based username registration system. Not completely distributed, but decentralized and no harder to use than an email address -- with a bonus that it may be an actual email address for people and organizations with their own domain. Is somewhat sad Tox didn't got used, it was pretty advanced even years ago.
- nunobrito 9y ago
  Indeed was expecting to see Tox moving forward. Instead, we see yet another decentralized messenger that will end up repeating the same as the former. Rinse and repeat in a couple of years.. :(
h1d 9y ago
They should put effort on the internals. Maybe if it's great, someone else might come and build a decent UI.

w8rbt 9y ago

I'm not sure this is always true. GNU Coreutils offer much more functionality and are preferred by many for this reason.

_delirium 9y ago

Odd, that's not my experience with GNU software. On a regular basis I use GNU Emacs, GNU R, gimp, and gcc, among other things, and while all have flaws, I don't feel that they're just things for free software fans to brag about without having productive use cases. I certainly use them to get real work done.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
dsacco 9y ago
I feel the parent was referring to new projects released under the GNU banner, not software that is decades old and highly stable.
- kronos29296 9y ago
  Some examples maybe? Haven't been in touch with any new GNU projects.
Rjevski 9y ago
You are a technical user and most of those products are aimed at technical users so that's fine - even in the proprietary world I don't expect a tech app to be easy to use. However here we're talking about a chat client - something that should be easy to use by anyone, including your grandma. And so far, GNU and similar free software projects have failed to ship anything usable by a non-technical user. Finally, GCC or GIMP doesn't fail because not many people use it whereas a chat client fades into irrelevance if nobody uses it, so even the tech people will abandon it. Take a look at Mozilla - despite being free and open source they nailed their UX. Go to https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/new/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/new/ and notice how there's no mention of "open source" nor "mailing list" nor "./configure && make". Instead there's a list of reasons an average user would like to use it and a download button that gives you a ready to use binary.
- remir 9y ago
  Voilà. I think a big problem in software dev is that technical people struggle to think like non-technical people. They can't put themselves in the shoes of their grandma or "Joe Six Pack". I mean, just look at the download page for Spotify on Linux. "repository signing keys", "keyserver", "sudo apt-get". I can see a non-technical person thinking: "WTF is that? Where's the installer? Where's the DMG file?" I remember an argument with someone on IRC about Linux and the person actually said that everybody should learn commands and those who don't are simply lazy and dumb. This mentality is problematic and toxic for the cause of FOSS.

MichaelMoser123 9y ago

Without gcc (also GNU) you wouldn't hear much at all (about open source software) ...