4 ms·

With all those controversial statements Moxie was making and questionable decisions in development Signal lost its initial attractiveness and, in my opinion, re

With all those controversial statements Moxie was making and questionable decisions in development Signal lost its initial attractiveness and, in my opinion, relevance. Even Wire opened their server-side source code by now (not that Signal hadn't). While this was happening, we got Matrix[0] and GNU Ring[1] in a usable state, and I can't see any reason to use Signal (let alone Telegram) any more. This is all very unfortunate, because the success of this type of services depend strongly on its initial user-base size. For a while, with the rise of mobile there seemed to appear a critical window (from the public perspective: ICQ forgotten, XMPP not even noticed, Skype annoyed everyone, Google talk ?) for a new IM to fit itself, but it seems lost. I fear enticing users to switch to the reasonable solutions, like those mentioned, is already a Sisyphean task. Don't know about you, but I'm not valuable enough contact to keep one more application installed on someone's smartphone to contact me exclusively. "Cut showing off, use what everyone's using!" Even in a rarest occasion when I manage to successively tempt anyone, with the first bug or UX flaw they jump ship and become even more opposite to the idea of trying what's supposed to be a better solution. [0] https://matrix.org/ https://matrix.org/ [1] https://ring.cx/ https://ring.cx/

kilburn 9y ago
I'm sorry to say that but... have you actually tried GNU Ring? It is the least usable IM-thingy I've ever tried. I tried it in 3 different plaforms (OSX, Android, Linux) and in every case I found (different) experience-breaking bugs (>30min to find a contact, registration timeouts, missing GUI buttons, and so on). Also, you can have multiple devices connected but not all messages will reach all devices, and of course an offline device will not receive messages sent since it was last online. I really wanted to like it and push for it, but I just can't in its state :(
- ZoomZoomZoom 9y ago
  Yeah, it's far from perfect, and I wasn't saying it's ready for prime time. However, it's a much more complex piece of engineering, being a P2P messenger. I'm impressed with the development even considering all the bugs.
- tripzilch 9y ago
  Matrix/Riot.im works pretty well. It's a bit of a hassle getting the devices verified[0], and (imho) a bit unintuitive about how it shows contacts, chats and rooms. But it works. [0] Tip: name the devices and remove any you don't recognize, I just have three devices with Riot.im installed but during setup some others appeared, maybe duplicates or a web session, I got rid of those. Less devices is less verifications.
evgen 9y ago
You would only use Signal (or Telegram) if you want to talk to other people. Metcalf's Law is a bitch, and neither Matrix nor Ring are going to make it over the bar. They are both far too late to the mobile party and desktop IM usage is not even a rounding error at this point. An honest analysis would be that the Signal protocol will survive as a part of WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, and the rest of the secure comm protocols and apps are doomed to a slow slide into irrelevance. Most will linger as a mechanism for making traffic analysis of their users just a bit easier, but in general their future is grim.
mi100hael 9y ago
> Even Wire opened their server-side source code by now (not that Signal hadn't). AFAIK the Signal voice/video server is still kept private so you can't run your own. Only the text server is freely available.

kilburn 9y ago

I'm sorry to say that but... have you actually tried GNU Ring? It is the least usable IM-thingy I've ever tried. I tried it in 3 different plaforms (OSX, Android, Linux) and in every case I found (different) experience-breaking bugs (>30min to find a contact, registration timeouts, missing GUI buttons, and so on). Also, you can have multiple devices connected but not all messages will reach all devices, and of course an offline device will not receive messages sent since it was last online. I really wanted to like it and push for it, but I just can't in its state :(

ZoomZoomZoom 9y ago
Yeah, it's far from perfect, and I wasn't saying it's ready for prime time. However, it's a much more complex piece of engineering, being a P2P messenger. I'm impressed with the development even considering all the bugs.
tripzilch 9y ago
Matrix/Riot.im works pretty well. It's a bit of a hassle getting the devices verified[0], and (imho) a bit unintuitive about how it shows contacts, chats and rooms. But it works. [0] Tip: name the devices and remove any you don't recognize, I just have three devices with Riot.im installed but during setup some others appeared, maybe duplicates or a web session, I got rid of those. Less devices is less verifications.

evgen 9y ago

You would only use Signal (or Telegram) if you want to talk to other people. Metcalf's Law is a bitch, and neither Matrix nor Ring are going to make it over the bar. They are both far too late to the mobile party and desktop IM usage is not even a rounding error at this point. An honest analysis would be that the Signal protocol will survive as a part of WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, and the rest of the secure comm protocols and apps are doomed to a slow slide into irrelevance. Most will linger as a mechanism for making traffic analysis of their users just a bit easier, but in general their future is grim.

mi100hael 9y ago

> Even Wire opened their server-side source code by now (not that Signal hadn't). AFAIK the Signal voice/video server is still kept private so you can't run your own. Only the text server is freely available.