18 ms·

While working on Pebble, we ran into a lot of issues as we tried to enable messaging from the watch. For example, we never figured out how to send an iMessage o

While working on Pebble, we ran into a lot of issues as we tried to enable messaging from the watch. For example, we never figured out how to send an iMessage or WhatsApp reply. While digging around for a solution to that problem, I thought it was odd that no one had built a Adrium/Trillian/Meebo chat app for modern chat networks. I buried that thought for a while, until I learned about Matrix two years ago. Matrix is the holy grail of chat. It's end-to-end encrypted by default, federated and open source. The only problem is that not a single one of my friends or family was on it! Luckily the Matrix folks had already envisioned a solution to this problem - they built an API enabling 'bridges' between Matrix and other chat networks. This struck a chord with me, maybe we could finally build a single app that I could use to chat with all my friends, regardless of which chat app they used. Through the Matrix community I met Tulir, the most prolific bridge developer and we started working together on what would become Beeper. I've been using it as my primary chat client for almost 2 years now. I could not imagine going back to the hot mess of 12 different chat apps I had before! Beeper is a paid service because I think it aligns interests between us and our users. We make a featureful and secure app, in exchange you pay us money. For those who prefer to self-host, you can run the entire Beeper backend stack on your own server. The vast majority of the code we've written for Beeper is open source on gitlab.com/nova. Our desktop client is closed source, but you can use Element (or any open source Matrix client) if you prefer. See our FAQ for more info or I'd be happy to explain more.

wsinks 6y ago
Ha, when all those apps started breaking out, I knew that there would be a day when someone would finally connect them. Thank you for the story about how Matrix enabled you here, we're all standing on the backs of turtles!
gtf21 6y ago
How does this play with the security of e.g. Signal? Security and privacy is the main reason many of us will use it so I wouldn't want to compromise it. Would love to use this on Linux, I find all the desktop apps really rubbish (and very happy to pay for it).
- feanaro 6y ago
  Matrix's encryption is based on the same cryptographic ratchet technology used by Signal. The protocols involved are called Olm and Megolm. Olm is used for establishing 1-on-1 sessions between pairs of users (or rather, their devices). This is then used as a secure channel to share Megolm keys. A Megolm key is ratcheted with each room message sent and is used to derive a symmetric AES key with which the message is actually encrypted. Periodically (every N messages) a new Megolm key is created and re-shared with room participants. So the end result is that it has roughly the same security as Signal, except that a single compromised Megolm key will reveal N messages to the attacker instead of just a single message. In return, the protocol is much more scalable, enabling relatively efficient large end-to-end encrypted groups. Otherwise, all the session self-healing, forward secrecy properties of Signal are retained. TL;DR: Approximately the same as Signal, trading a tiny bit of security in the event of a key leak for more scalable encryption in the setting of large groups.
  - kevincox 6y ago
    I believe this is true for Matrix-to-Matrix communication. However if I understand correctly the bridges terminate the e2e encryption and then connect to the third party service (possibly with a different e2e session).
    - km3r 6y ago
      you can self host the bridge between matrix and signal, allowing e2e to a host you control, and e2e from that host to your device. Perhaps not ideal, but likely unavoidable if you want an all in one app like this.
    - feanaro 6y ago
      Yes, I was talking about native Matrix specifically.
  - rStar 6y ago
    so the answer is: yes this reduces security over signal for both myself and whomever i’m chatting with. due to this, seems like a questionable choice to include signal.
recursivedoubts 6y ago
Thank you, I am very glad to pay you money to solve this problem! Without an open source client, how can I be assured that you aren't harvesting user data through it?
- erohead 6y ago
  At first, you have to trust us though we will perform auditing eventually. If you would like to use an open source Matrix client, that works as well!
necrotic_comp 6y ago
This is fantastic stuff. Thank you for building it. Matrix truly is a wonderful piece of software.
michaeljelly 6y ago
Honestly so glad it's a paid service. I'm happy to pay for something I can trust to handle my messages, rather than using them against me to sell ads/send to shady data brokers! Awesome work Eric, Tulir, and the whole Matrix team too!
- spiffytech 6y ago
  $10/mo is steeper than I like for a chat app, but this is so huge to just roll everything into one place, and I like that it's OSS, so I'm happy to pitch in and support the devs even if I'm capable of self-hosting the backend.
  - petre 6y ago
    For $10/mo one could host their own VPS and server infra.
    - robinhood 6y ago
      Classic HN comment. Yeah, $10/mo, + the time needed to setup everything + the time to maintain it + the security holes to patch yourself + the downtime because the instance rebooted for some reasons + the monitoring of the service + all the time wasted because you could have simply lived your life and paid the reasonable fees for the service in the first place.
      - rattray 6y ago
        The first sentence in your otherwise useful post doesn't feel helpful to the conversation.
      - petre 6y ago
        Not at all, prosody and ejabberd both work flawlessly without all of that nonsense. If it's a shitty piece of software maybe, but then why even bother using it in the first place?
        6y ago
sarthakjshetty 6y ago
Holy! I don't remember the last time I was this excited for a chat app. I just saw your tweet and came to HN to post it but this was already on the front page haha. Just a quick question (completely noob question, I apologize in advance), do bridges work like APIs? Where can I read more about this protocol? Really looking forward to this Eric!
- erohead 6y ago
  Simplest way to learn about the API is to look at several bot implementations https://github.com/maubot/maubot https://github.com/maubot/maubot
  - sarthakjshetty 6y ago
    Awesome! Thanks a ton!
have_faith 6y ago
How “brittle” are the integrations? I guess I mean is this a supported feature of all the 3rd party services or do you have to rely on hooking into undocumented apis that could change at any time etc.
- erohead 6y ago
  I've been using it for the last year straight and I think we only experienced one unforeseen breaking API change.
  - have_faith 6y ago
    Just chiming in, I probably wouldn't pay for $10 a month for this service (maybe I'm not the target market). I do use various messaging apps and it is annoying though. This jumped out at me: >we send each user a Jailbroken iPhone with the Beeper app installed which bridges to iMessage I couldn't tell if that was some sort of joke or if it meant something different to how I was reading it? Being open source is great, but to be honest I lack the time (and expertise) to see how all the integrations work. A page that describes a high level overview of how this works exactly might build more trust. Good luck!
- jeroenhd 6y ago
  I'm running several of the mentioned integrations on my own server (without the Ansible script) and every now and then there's a weird bug, or some slowdown, or some messages not getting through, but I've mostly switched. I'm not sure if I'd ever pay $10/mo for a service whose main selling point is running what are essentially reverse-engineered hacks. Some of the integrations use the official available API (like the Telegram one) but others (like the Whatsapp and Signal ones) run on altered web client code. Furthermore, in most commercial chat systems, alternative clients are usually not allowed and can lead to a ban of your account if the server considers you a bot. The product is a worthy attempt at fixing the mess that is modern chat solutions, but from my experience I just don't trust the system enough to switch. Also keep in mind that any e2e encryption platforms like Signal and Whatsapp provide is made worthless if you use a bridge; I haven't seen any bridge use Matrix's e2e encryption yet and your messages are all being decrypted on the server regardless.
ignoramous 6y ago
Thanks! Beeper looks amazing. > Our desktop client is closed source, but you can use Element (or any open source Matrix client) if you prefer. I see most bridges are licensed AGPLv3 [0]: Aren't you required to AGPLv3 the desktop client, too? [0] For ex: https://gitlab.com/nova/whatsapp/-/blob/master/LICENSE https://gitlab.com/nova/whatsapp/-/blob/master/LICENSE
- erohead 6y ago
  The bridges do not run inside the client, they either run on your own self-hosted server or our cloud.
  - KitDuncan 6y ago
    I already have a Matrix server with the bridges I need running. Can I still use your desktop client? It looks sick!
- nextaccountic 6y ago
  > Then aren't you required to AGPLv3 the desktop client, too? Only if the desktop client is legally a derivative work of the bridges.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- rkangel 6y ago
  The "network connection" provision of AGPL doesn't require you to open source anything you use to talk to it, just modifications of it. To make it clearer: Client <--> Server. The server is AGPL licenced. I can write a client to talk to the server and I don't have any licence restrictions. For example - if I write a web client to talk to an AGPL web server, I don't have to open source the client. If I modify the AGPL server, and then put that modified server on the internet then the AGPL terms require me to make available the modified source code. I am not a lawyer, but this is my understanding of this: https://choosealicense.com/licenses/agpl-3.0/ https://choosealicense.com/licenses/agpl-3.0/
crooked-v 6y ago
> Beeper is a paid service It took me multiple times searching that page to find the "$10 monthly fee" hidden in the FAQ section. You desperately need an obvious pricing section.
- foolinaround 6y ago
  $10 monthly for a chat service is a bit steep for users from Asia and other places..
  - donclark 6y ago
    Good point. Maybe their pricing could be location based?
    - flurdy 6y ago
      That would just be worked around with VPNs etc, so then they have to spend a huge amount of their dev time not on features but instead on working out how to detect where the users are geolocated. IP, language, credit card address etc. Just not worth it and always going to be many edge cases. One price for all is fairer even if it is very expensive for some locations/people
  - viewer5 6y ago
    Is it a just plain high price (e.g. if this was $50/month that would be expensive for me, here in the US) or is it high comparable to other things (e.g. "other messaging apps would be closer to $3/month")?
    - pinusc 6y ago
      It's comparably high-other messaging apps are _free_. Don't get me wrong, this is awesome-I've been doing it myself manually by hosting bridges myself for a while, and it seems like a very nice solution for non-tech-savy users. But $10/month is steep, given that in practice you're paying that much just for the convenience of having your (pre existing chats) in the same app. What I don't get is that hosting your own bridges requires the same $10/month subscription. If there was a $2/month fee for "power users" instead, letting you host your own... I would most likely get a subscription for the convenience of using their better integrated software.
mrkramer 6y ago
Couldn't all of these chat apps change their TOS and forbid Matrix bridges like Discord forbid running through 3rd party client? You depend on all of those chat providers to allow you to hook everything in one app.
- kitkat_new 6y ago
  t2bot.io hosts a Discord bridge and to my knowledge it is officially allowed by Discord (else they could not have more than 100+ bridge users).
  - kevincox 6y ago
    The Discord bridge you are talking about here is a Bot which is officially allowed by Discord, however the Bot APIs have serious limitations that make it unsuitable for full bridging (which is basically making a Discord client). For example it can only be used in "channels" and needs to be added to each "server" by an admin. This means that it is hard to use in servers where you are a guest and you can't use it in DMs and non-channel group chats. I assume they are offering a "puppeting bridge" which means it acts as you, however this means that it is using unsupported APIs and Discord has been known to ban accounts for this. I think it is pretty disingenuous to put the Discord logo on the homepage without pointing out those caveats.
- luplex 6y ago
  Yes they can! But it's unlikely they would all do it at the same time.
- wiggler00m 6y ago
  This has happened multiple times in the past with similar aggregators. I will be surprised if it does not happen again. But good luck. I want products like this to exist.
arendtio 6y ago
How about XMPP support? I mean, you are talking about Matrix being the holy grail of chat and at the same time you do not support the IETF standard for instant messaging (which is also federated, supports E2E encryption, can use bridges to other networks and has several open source implementations)... In general, my biggest issue with the Matrix community is that they chose to build something new, instead of fixing something existing. Granted, at the time when Matrix started, XMPP wasn't fit for the mobile revolution. But instead of improving the XMPP standard (which other people did afterward), the Matrix people decided to build something new from the ground up. They took a few different design decisions, but in my opinion, nothing that would justify building a competing solution and splitting the already thin developer community. Now we have too solutions, both failing to find significant adoption. I understand that the matrix people probably built their eco system as a hobby, so who am I to criticize them. I just feel so depressed, seeing so much work being done on a very important subject, not fulfilling its potential due to missing focus.
- acct776 6y ago
  Was XMPP improved at that time? Or a mess of nonstandard addons/plugins that you had to match up, like mods in a multiplayer videogame?
  - Semaphor 6y ago
    Close. It’s a mess of standard addons/plugins that you have to match up, like mods in a multiplayer videogame. Sadly for me, it’s also the only modern messenger that has decent desktop clients that don’t look like discord. But I guess that this will never change as I seem to be pretty lonely with my want of those.
    - dijit 6y ago
      The solution was nearly always to create golden packages which could be summarised. XMPP v1 server could be just XMPP itself. A v2 client/server includes packages for OMEMO, Websocket, Resumeable connections A v3 client/server has packages for whatever else becomes the de jour. The idea that you can just mix and match without ever standardising on a set of capabilities was a large part of what killed XMPP and was entirely solvable.
azinman2 6y ago
Where is the open source code for the iMessage bridge?
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  It doesn't exist yet.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25849040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25849040
nextaccountic 6y ago
Hey, does it support Telegram stickers?
- kitkat_new 6y ago
  I don't know about the app, but you can use Telegram stickers in Matrix - somewhat. However, it requires a few minutes of work: https://github.com/maunium/stickerpicker https://github.com/maunium/stickerpicker For video watchers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz3H6KJTEI0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz3H6KJTEI0
kitkat_new 6y ago
Kudos to Tulir!!!
raunakdag 6y ago
Do you guys plan on continuing with the jailbreakable iPhone method for iMessage bridging for the foreseeable future, or is there an alternative one can expect that is being worked on?
littlehugie 6y ago
Will you Support Threema in the future?
- hans_castorp 6y ago
  Came here to ask the same. It would only make sense to me if Threema is also added to the list (Signal already is)
ibeckermayer 6y ago
This is amazing. I had precisely this idea ~6mo ago (but never actually built anything). Excited to see you’ve done all the heavy lifting for me. I also love the paid model to align interests and the ability to self host. I will definitely be giving this a test run.
liminalsunset 6y ago
On the website it looks like it says Android and iOS via Element [appears to be the renamed Riot.im matrix client]. Is there no custom iOS or Android application for Beeper that this will ship with?
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  Yeah riot was renamed, as they finally admitted that it was a weird name with negative connotations. Never understood what was wrong with the name vector by the way. That was even nicer IMO.
- acct776 6y ago
  Why would you want that additional attack surface?
spamalot159 6y ago
How does your iMessage integration compare to AirMessage? I've been using AirMessage for a couple months now on my new Android phone and it is about 80% reliable. Images and videos also take significantly longer to processes than if I were to use an iPhone. I wonder if Beeper would be an upgrade over AirMessage or if it is essentially the same.
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  Beeper requires a Mac like AirMessage. Or they'll send you a jailbroken iPhone.
  - giancarlostoro 6y ago
    How old are these iPhones cause that's the oddest part of that setup I've heard.
    - pseudalopex 6y ago
      iPhone 4.[1] [1] https://twitter.com/ericmigi/status/1351934418961661959 https://twitter.com/ericmigi/status/1351934418961661959
      - giancarlostoro 6y ago
        Thanks for that! It's kind of funny to me, but also kind of cool. I guess you just have to be sure to charge the iPhone every now and then.
        pseudalopex 6y ago
        I think the idea is you leave it plugged in at home.
  - SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
    How is imessage so hard to reverse engineer that its easier to send someone a jailbroken iphone to use? Surely the protocol can't even change much since many users are stuck on old versions as its part of the OS.
bluesmoon 6y ago
As an answer to your first question: Between 2000-2003, I worked on components of the cross protocol IM backend used by many of the multi-protocol messengers back in the early to mid 2000s (eg: Adium, Trillian, Fire, Ayttm, and more). Each of the frontends had different ways to integrate. Trillian used 2 processes with TCP communication between them to get around the GPL licensed backend), Fire, Adium, Ayttm released everything under the GPL. Eventually most clients moved to using libpurple as the backend (developed by the team behind Gaim), but the devs also started getting older, busier, and having other responsibilities outside of work. The only apps to survive were those that had a business model that allowed them to reuse open source code without having to release any of the code they developed themselves. I personally stopped working on instant messaging in April 2004, the night before I became a Yahoo employee, though I continued blogging and doing conference talks about the experience: - https://tech.bluesmoon.info/2004/09/fallback-messaging.html https://tech.bluesmoon.info/2004/09/fallback-messaging.html - https://tech.bluesmoon.info/2011/05/story-of-george-ayttms-most-prolific.html https://tech.bluesmoon.info/2011/05/story-of-george-ayttms-m... - https://tech.bluesmoon.info/2010/11/stream-of-collaboration-and-unified.html https://tech.bluesmoon.info/2010/11/stream-of-collaboration-...
- est31 6y ago
  It's not just about devs getting older and busier, but also about networks becoming openly hostile towards third party client implementations. There used to be a healthy ecosystem of Whatsapp client libraries, but they have gotten takedowns, and their users bans. Eventually people give up. Some few individuals build third party implementations but keep them secret so that there is no retribution (I remember reading about a guy blogging about a self made iMessage client).
  - Arathorn 6y ago
    Thankfully the EU is moving rapidly towards making that sort of behaviour illegal, which as a knock-on effect should improve the situation for the world in general. https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/euro...
pinusc 6y ago
As someone who self-hosts a bunch of bridges–great work! Really appreciate seeing a simple solution for people who don't know or don't want to self host. Also, seeing that Tulir is not working entirely pro-bono but that his efforts are backed by a company makes me more hopeful that the bridge development will continue!
NikolaNovak 6y ago
This feels too good to be true. It feels a "Shut up and take my money". I thought with effective demise of XMPP and myriad differing standards and proprietary apps & protocols, this could not happen anymore. I'll check out your site and you may have some very happy paid users soon :)
StavrosK 6y ago
I would love to pay you for this (though I think $10 is a bit steep), but I don't want you to be able to read my messages, which you are since you run the bridges.
- acct776 6y ago
  Is it possible to build a zero-trust version of this?
  - eps 6y ago
    No. Bridges need plaintext messages, because that's what they feed into WhatsApp and other clients.
    - kitkat_new 6y ago
      Can't you put the bridges on a pi, like described at the website?
  - kitkat_new 6y ago
    see the self hosting options
- acct776 6y ago
  Also, didn't they say something about being able to run the full stack self-hosted?
pimeys 6y ago
Thank you for Pebble! It was my main Diabetes app for seeing the current blood glucose directly from my wrist until my Pebble 2 finally died a year ago. It was almost like magic and had a week of battery life. The commercial matrix bridge is an excellent idea. I was able to get my homeserver running, but it is a hell of a job to get everything working. When it does work, oh boy, it again feels like magic!
- erohead 6y ago
  So good to hear that! Have you considered buying one off ebay? Still some good deals there :)
GekkePrutser 6y ago
Wasn't this NovaChat before? I signed up for the beta and was thinking of planning a session with you for enrolment as you mentioned in your last email, hasn't had time yet, sorry. Saw it here at the last HN post. If it's available now I'll gladly use it. Since the Whatsapp thing a couple weeks ago even more of my contacts have spread out to different apps and it drives me nuts. Pricing sounds good too, I know these bridges need work to maintain. I've tried to run them myself using the docker script but it's not ideal. And supporting the maintenance is great.
- erohead 6y ago
  Yes, Beeper is the new name for NovaChat.
  - GekkePrutser 6y ago
    Ok, great, I like the new name a lot better! It was just funny when I read it first, I thought someone else had the same idea :)
p00f 6y ago
What are the system requirements for self-hosting?
modeless 6y ago
I would love for this to keep expanding to more inboxes, and beyond to news feeds and other kinda inbox-shaped things. Why not aggregate Facebook news feed, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, HN, your local newspaper, etc. It's what Google Reader woulda/coulda/shoulda become. Please, break down the walled gardens. Free us from the whims of the product managers pumping out redesign after redesign for all the services we use.
spondyl 6y ago
Having actually run through spantaleev's matrix-docker-ansible-deploy twice in the past, and run the Matrix bridge stack for a few months each time, this is interesting. Eventually I would have some bridges get out of sync (ie I responded on mobile but the bridge doesn't show my message or messages would get lost) but overall, it worked really well. The downside of having one error in relative isolation is not the bug itself but that it makes you distrust the stack entirely and you end up double checking the source messenger "just to make sure" Having said that, it looks like you've done quite a bit of development on the bridges from a quick glimpse of the Gitlab repos. How are those forks related to Tulir's bridges? Does he integrate any of your changes and vice versa or are they two unique development streams? In your comment, it sounds like Tulir is working with you? Anyway, I'm looking forward to this very much because the multi-messenger thing has been the bane of my existence, I swear. I would gladly pay $10/month to fix this as I have online (and offline) friends all over the place. Oh, for the unified inbox, is there any way to "group" by a person? For example, if I primarily chat with someone on Line but then occasionally talk through iMessage. I would expect them to render as two different "conversations" but logically, they're one person of course. Lastly, I thought the line about shipping an iPhone was satire. You might want to put a note in there like "No really".
- erohead 6y ago
  Tulir is on the Beeper team, he's the one writing all the bridges! They are quite reliable now.
  - spondyl 6y ago
    Ahh, I think I was a little confused. I had noted that there were "forks" on Gitlab but they're actually just mirrors it looks like so fork is perhaps a misnomer in this case on the part of Gitlab? Also curious to know what the schedule is like for people to sign up? I seemingly never received anything that states I'm on a waitlist or just that my sign up didn't generally go into a blackhole.
jimbob45 6y ago
I thought Apple barred iMessages from being sent/retrieved outside of the specific iMessage app? How did you dodge that?
- el_dev_hell 6y ago
  Apparently: How in the world did you get iMessage to work on Android and Windows? This was a tough one to figure out! Beeper has two ways of enabling Android, Windows and Linux users to use iMessage: we send each user a Jailbroken iPhone with the Beeper app installed which bridges to iMessage, or if they have a Mac that is always connected to the internet, they can install the Beeper Mac app which acts as a bridge.
  - jimbob45 6y ago
    Hmmm, you could pretty easily spin up a Mac container with the Beeper app and then remote into that from your phone. Seems like a lot of work. Still, it seems like they didn't really dodge anything at all. It's the same gripe I had with Signal: if I have to switch between iMessage and Signal, then I'll never be able to sell Signal to my family.
    - aquaticsunset 6y ago
      I'm not sure if this project will go any further, nor if iMessage works inside here, but this is an easier way forward: https://github.com/popey/sosumi-snap https://github.com/popey/sosumi-snap
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
Question: If you already have bridges in place to send and receive messages in other clients, is there any reason I can't chat from those clients? In other words, I want to be able to use the Messages app on my iPhone to communicate with other people using Discord, WhatsApp, Slack, etc. I would absolutely pay $10 a month for that, and I almost never subscribe to anything! Is that something you could turn on, or is it more complicated than I'm imagining? P.S. I'm wearing a Pebble 2 right now. Thanks for all your work on that, it's a great device. Edit: Actually, even just some sort of XMPP gateway, so I could use any client that supports XMPP, would basically be enough for me.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  ...as I think about this more, could I, uh, just in general get more detail on what clients can be used? Asking as someone who has never used Matrix before.
Aeolun 6y ago
I would really like one of these apps to integrate with LINE, which is really big in Japan. Every time I see something like this I check again, but it’s so far never been supported.
- nimbleal 6y ago
  I was about to comment the same, but with Wechat. I can’t not use wechat, much as I’d like to. I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t significantly more difficult/impossible to integrate though.
- kixiQu 6y ago
  I would pour my own blood into a Dockerfile to have the LINE stickers in Matrix.
filmor 6y ago
I think part of the problem is that there is no infrastructure for something like this on iOS and Android. With webOS, there was a single messaging app that integrated SMS, Skype, Facebook and Google. The latter part was implemented using libpurple, so it was relatively easy to extend this to all messaging that libpurple supports. I really liked that approach (marketing name was "Synergy", unified messaging was only a small part of this), but it's quite obvious that neither Apple nor Google have any interest in adopting this unified approach for anything but their respective own messaging of the day.
- kevincox 6y ago
  I think if we could get the world unified on a single chat protocol we can expect things like this to emerge. Of course it will be unlikely to happen soon, if at all. Plus we all know that Google really wants to own a chat app so maybe they will decide not to make it first-class in Android i fit seems like a threat.
  - acct776 6y ago
    Some big NGOs and world governments are getting on the Matrix train, and the name is dope, don't count that for 0.
  - filmor 6y ago
    Well, it's become quite clear that this unified protocol will never happen :) I'd rather be prepared to use different protocols in a sensible way.
- acct776 6y ago
  We could always start building on webOS again, it's open now, right?
  - filmor 6y ago
    There are people working on this: https://webos-ports.org https://webos-ports.org A few years ago I was in contact with someone from the project to integrate the changes that I did, so their messaging client should now support pretty much everything that Pidgin supports (which, as I learned today, nowadays includes Matrix, Signal, Telegram and Steam as well through plugins). Maybe I should install that on my old Nexus 4 and see how far they got... :)
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
Nicely done, congratulations on the launch! This brings back memories. In 2017 I had launched a similar 'chat-app network' platform[1] for privacy focused dating using Bot API of the respective platforms allowing communication between, Messenger <-> Telegram <-> Viber <-> LINE It was quickly selected for acceleration by one of those platforms. The features included half-duplex messaging(user had to wait for reply to send a message to prevent harassment), optional location, near-far dates switch etc. Adoption was quick, the first major issue I ran into was that in SE Asian countries many used their children photographs for profile picture in chat apps, which obviously was a no go for dating, so I had to implement Amazon Rekognition to detect age and make those users change their profile picture and their profiles weren't displayed until it was changed. At peak it processed 200,000 images/month. Obviously bridge approach as in Beeper(Matrix) is a more reliable approach than using Bot API, especially due to UI/UX limitations and even platform stability issues(Some bot API were nascent). In about a year it even crossed the Trough of Sorrow with ~2,40,000 users on Messenger alone.[2] But had to let go of it as I fell sick(was told I could become quadriplegic[3]) and as single founder bus factor hit my startup. I received several offers to buy the platform, but I didn't sell it as I was not sure whether the buyers would stick to the privacy promises. So I just nuked the platform. Even if I had continued, I'm not sure whether I could have monetized successfully as selling digital content was explicitly prohibited by these platforms because of Apple Tax/Google Tax(it would mean that the chat apps function as app store). [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeuL8_Qinhs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeuL8_Qinhs [2]https://web.archive.org/web/20181203031208/https://finddate.co/goodbye-finddate-is-shutting-down/ https://web.archive.org/web/20181203031208/https://finddate.... [3]https://abishekmuthian.com/i-was-told-i-would-become-quadriplegic-68c0371e6f05/ https://abishekmuthian.com/i-was-told-i-would-become-quadrip...
mail2merge 6y ago
This is good. What competitors do you fear? Also, why no WeChat? The stickers are the best there !
alex_duf 6y ago
I'm glad to see a paid for service, by I don't think I'd take the jump for $10 a month! >(from the website) we send each user a Jailbroken iPhone with the Beeper app installed which bridges to iMessage Aren't you worried about Apple's reprisal ? Also it might be worth adding a word about the privacy of the messages. Am I correct that the end to end encryption goes out the window and each Matrix connector can see the messages in plain text? I think it's not so much an issue as long as it's clear to the user, and that they pay for you to keep their private messages private.
- LordOfWolves 6y ago
  I'm also curious about Beeper's plan re: potential response/pushback from Apple and the status of (likely broken?) E2E in iMessage.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    If I backup my WhatsApp messages in plaintext or screenshot my iMessage it’s still E2E. Once the message is delivered all bets are off. Forwarding all my messages to some 3rd party service doesn’t break E2E anymore then forwarding them to my friends.
- harlanji 6y ago
  I’m homeless and pay $10/mo for a terminal app. The value is in the eye of the beholder... FWIW I used to be a pretty well paid software engineer, and I run as much of my personal IT as possible... so for me, the $10/mo is worth it to save seconds 100s of times per month and make hours of experience per month pleasant.
- swiley 6y ago
  >>(from the website) we send each user a Jailbroken iPhone with the Beeper app installed which bridges to iMessage Is there really something that makes iMessage so difficult to reverse engineer that this is considered economical? People were able to write AIM clients 20 years ago, what special trick has Apple used?
hartem_ 6y ago
Congrats on the launch! Subscribed and can't wait to get access :). Do you know what is WhatsApp's stance on a Matrix bridge and using it to provide a service? They've known to have a pretty harsh stance on other services that attempted to integrate ([0], [1]) and even banned users from the platform for attempting to scrape their own data. Would be very curious to know more details about your WhatsApp integration setup. Thanks in advance! [0] - https://www.xda-developers.com/whatsapp-sends-cease-desist-apps-native-android-api/ https://www.xda-developers.com/whatsapp-sends-cease-desist-a... [1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/89g926/whatsapp_cease_and_desist_letter_forces_removal/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/89g926/whatsapp_...
pabs3 6y ago
libpurple (the thing behind Adium/Pidgin) has plugins for a lot of the major messaging networks today.
aeoleonn 6y ago
In the FAQ, I'd suggest adding the words price & pricing. That way I can ctrl-f to either "price", or "pricing". To my weird brain, and after studying accounting, the word "cost" is more of a business/accounting perspective of "expense". Whereas the word "price" seems to be more of a consumer perspective of "expense". Yes, it's a little pedantic ;) Cost: "(of an object or action) require the payment of (a specified sum of money) before it can be acquired or done." Price: "the amount of money expected, required, or given in payment for something." I think it's because: Costing = Accounting. It's the "science" of determining the expense of producing a product or service. Pricing = Marketing. Marketing is what consumers experience.

wsinks 6y ago

Ha, when all those apps started breaking out, I knew that there would be a day when someone would finally connect them. Thank you for the story about how Matrix enabled you here, we're all standing on the backs of turtles!

gtf21 6y ago

How does this play with the security of e.g. Signal? Security and privacy is the main reason many of us will use it so I wouldn't want to compromise it. Would love to use this on Linux, I find all the desktop apps really rubbish (and very happy to pay for it).

feanaro 6y ago
Matrix's encryption is based on the same cryptographic ratchet technology used by Signal. The protocols involved are called Olm and Megolm. Olm is used for establishing 1-on-1 sessions between pairs of users (or rather, their devices). This is then used as a secure channel to share Megolm keys. A Megolm key is ratcheted with each room message sent and is used to derive a symmetric AES key with which the message is actually encrypted. Periodically (every N messages) a new Megolm key is created and re-shared with room participants. So the end result is that it has roughly the same security as Signal, except that a single compromised Megolm key will reveal N messages to the attacker instead of just a single message. In return, the protocol is much more scalable, enabling relatively efficient large end-to-end encrypted groups. Otherwise, all the session self-healing, forward secrecy properties of Signal are retained. TL;DR: Approximately the same as Signal, trading a tiny bit of security in the event of a key leak for more scalable encryption in the setting of large groups.
- kevincox 6y ago
  I believe this is true for Matrix-to-Matrix communication. However if I understand correctly the bridges terminate the e2e encryption and then connect to the third party service (possibly with a different e2e session).
  - km3r 6y ago
    you can self host the bridge between matrix and signal, allowing e2e to a host you control, and e2e from that host to your device. Perhaps not ideal, but likely unavoidable if you want an all in one app like this.
  - feanaro 6y ago
    Yes, I was talking about native Matrix specifically.
- rStar 6y ago
  so the answer is: yes this reduces security over signal for both myself and whomever i’m chatting with. due to this, seems like a questionable choice to include signal.

recursivedoubts 6y ago

Thank you, I am very glad to pay you money to solve this problem! Without an open source client, how can I be assured that you aren't harvesting user data through it?

erohead 6y ago
At first, you have to trust us though we will perform auditing eventually. If you would like to use an open source Matrix client, that works as well!

necrotic_comp 6y ago

This is fantastic stuff. Thank you for building it. Matrix truly is a wonderful piece of software.

michaeljelly 6y ago

Honestly so glad it's a paid service. I'm happy to pay for something I can trust to handle my messages, rather than using them against me to sell ads/send to shady data brokers! Awesome work Eric, Tulir, and the whole Matrix team too!

spiffytech 6y ago
$10/mo is steeper than I like for a chat app, but this is so huge to just roll everything into one place, and I like that it's OSS, so I'm happy to pitch in and support the devs even if I'm capable of self-hosting the backend.
- petre 6y ago
  For $10/mo one could host their own VPS and server infra.
  - robinhood 6y ago
    Classic HN comment. Yeah, $10/mo, + the time needed to setup everything + the time to maintain it + the security holes to patch yourself + the downtime because the instance rebooted for some reasons + the monitoring of the service + all the time wasted because you could have simply lived your life and paid the reasonable fees for the service in the first place.
    - rattray 6y ago
      The first sentence in your otherwise useful post doesn't feel helpful to the conversation.
    - petre 6y ago
      Not at all, prosody and ejabberd both work flawlessly without all of that nonsense. If it's a shitty piece of software maybe, but then why even bother using it in the first place?
      - 6y ago

sarthakjshetty 6y ago

Holy! I don't remember the last time I was this excited for a chat app. I just saw your tweet and came to HN to post it but this was already on the front page haha. Just a quick question (completely noob question, I apologize in advance), do bridges work like APIs? Where can I read more about this protocol? Really looking forward to this Eric!

erohead 6y ago
Simplest way to learn about the API is to look at several bot implementations https://github.com/maubot/maubot https://github.com/maubot/maubot
- sarthakjshetty 6y ago
  Awesome! Thanks a ton!

have_faith 6y ago

How “brittle” are the integrations? I guess I mean is this a supported feature of all the 3rd party services or do you have to rely on hooking into undocumented apis that could change at any time etc.

erohead 6y ago
I've been using it for the last year straight and I think we only experienced one unforeseen breaking API change.
- have_faith 6y ago
  Just chiming in, I probably wouldn't pay for $10 a month for this service (maybe I'm not the target market). I do use various messaging apps and it is annoying though. This jumped out at me: >we send each user a Jailbroken iPhone with the Beeper app installed which bridges to iMessage I couldn't tell if that was some sort of joke or if it meant something different to how I was reading it? Being open source is great, but to be honest I lack the time (and expertise) to see how all the integrations work. A page that describes a high level overview of how this works exactly might build more trust. Good luck!
jeroenhd 6y ago
I'm running several of the mentioned integrations on my own server (without the Ansible script) and every now and then there's a weird bug, or some slowdown, or some messages not getting through, but I've mostly switched. I'm not sure if I'd ever pay $10/mo for a service whose main selling point is running what are essentially reverse-engineered hacks. Some of the integrations use the official available API (like the Telegram one) but others (like the Whatsapp and Signal ones) run on altered web client code. Furthermore, in most commercial chat systems, alternative clients are usually not allowed and can lead to a ban of your account if the server considers you a bot. The product is a worthy attempt at fixing the mess that is modern chat solutions, but from my experience I just don't trust the system enough to switch. Also keep in mind that any e2e encryption platforms like Signal and Whatsapp provide is made worthless if you use a bridge; I haven't seen any bridge use Matrix's e2e encryption yet and your messages are all being decrypted on the server regardless.

ignoramous 6y ago

Thanks! Beeper looks amazing. > Our desktop client is closed source, but you can use Element (or any open source Matrix client) if you prefer. I see most bridges are licensed AGPLv3 [0]: Aren't you required to AGPLv3 the desktop client, too? [0] For ex: https://gitlab.com/nova/whatsapp/-/blob/master/LICENSE https://gitlab.com/nova/whatsapp/-/blob/master/LICENSE

erohead 6y ago
The bridges do not run inside the client, they either run on your own self-hosted server or our cloud.
- KitDuncan 6y ago
  I already have a Matrix server with the bridges I need running. Can I still use your desktop client? It looks sick!
nextaccountic 6y ago
> Then aren't you required to AGPLv3 the desktop client, too? Only if the desktop client is legally a derivative work of the bridges.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rkangel 6y ago
The "network connection" provision of AGPL doesn't require you to open source anything you use to talk to it, just modifications of it. To make it clearer: Client <--> Server. The server is AGPL licenced. I can write a client to talk to the server and I don't have any licence restrictions. For example - if I write a web client to talk to an AGPL web server, I don't have to open source the client. If I modify the AGPL server, and then put that modified server on the internet then the AGPL terms require me to make available the modified source code. I am not a lawyer, but this is my understanding of this: https://choosealicense.com/licenses/agpl-3.0/ https://choosealicense.com/licenses/agpl-3.0/

crooked-v 6y ago

> Beeper is a paid service It took me multiple times searching that page to find the "$10 monthly fee" hidden in the FAQ section. You desperately need an obvious pricing section.

foolinaround 6y ago
$10 monthly for a chat service is a bit steep for users from Asia and other places..
- donclark 6y ago
  Good point. Maybe their pricing could be location based?
  - flurdy 6y ago
    That would just be worked around with VPNs etc, so then they have to spend a huge amount of their dev time not on features but instead on working out how to detect where the users are geolocated. IP, language, credit card address etc. Just not worth it and always going to be many edge cases. One price for all is fairer even if it is very expensive for some locations/people
- viewer5 6y ago
  Is it a just plain high price (e.g. if this was $50/month that would be expensive for me, here in the US) or is it high comparable to other things (e.g. "other messaging apps would be closer to $3/month")?
  - pinusc 6y ago
    It's comparably high-other messaging apps are _free_. Don't get me wrong, this is awesome-I've been doing it myself manually by hosting bridges myself for a while, and it seems like a very nice solution for non-tech-savy users. But $10/month is steep, given that in practice you're paying that much just for the convenience of having your (pre existing chats) in the same app. What I don't get is that hosting your own bridges requires the same $10/month subscription. If there was a $2/month fee for "power users" instead, letting you host your own... I would most likely get a subscription for the convenience of using their better integrated software.

mrkramer 6y ago

Couldn't all of these chat apps change their TOS and forbid Matrix bridges like Discord forbid running through 3rd party client? You depend on all of those chat providers to allow you to hook everything in one app.

kitkat_new 6y ago
t2bot.io hosts a Discord bridge and to my knowledge it is officially allowed by Discord (else they could not have more than 100+ bridge users).
- kevincox 6y ago
  The Discord bridge you are talking about here is a Bot which is officially allowed by Discord, however the Bot APIs have serious limitations that make it unsuitable for full bridging (which is basically making a Discord client). For example it can only be used in "channels" and needs to be added to each "server" by an admin. This means that it is hard to use in servers where you are a guest and you can't use it in DMs and non-channel group chats. I assume they are offering a "puppeting bridge" which means it acts as you, however this means that it is using unsupported APIs and Discord has been known to ban accounts for this. I think it is pretty disingenuous to put the Discord logo on the homepage without pointing out those caveats.
luplex 6y ago
Yes they can! But it's unlikely they would all do it at the same time.
wiggler00m 6y ago
This has happened multiple times in the past with similar aggregators. I will be surprised if it does not happen again. But good luck. I want products like this to exist.

arendtio 6y ago

How about XMPP support? I mean, you are talking about Matrix being the holy grail of chat and at the same time you do not support the IETF standard for instant messaging (which is also federated, supports E2E encryption, can use bridges to other networks and has several open source implementations)... In general, my biggest issue with the Matrix community is that they chose to build something new, instead of fixing something existing. Granted, at the time when Matrix started, XMPP wasn't fit for the mobile revolution. But instead of improving the XMPP standard (which other people did afterward), the Matrix people decided to build something new from the ground up. They took a few different design decisions, but in my opinion, nothing that would justify building a competing solution and splitting the already thin developer community. Now we have too solutions, both failing to find significant adoption. I understand that the matrix people probably built their eco system as a hobby, so who am I to criticize them. I just feel so depressed, seeing so much work being done on a very important subject, not fulfilling its potential due to missing focus.

acct776 6y ago
Was XMPP improved at that time? Or a mess of nonstandard addons/plugins that you had to match up, like mods in a multiplayer videogame?
- Semaphor 6y ago
  Close. It’s a mess of standard addons/plugins that you have to match up, like mods in a multiplayer videogame. Sadly for me, it’s also the only modern messenger that has decent desktop clients that don’t look like discord. But I guess that this will never change as I seem to be pretty lonely with my want of those.
  - dijit 6y ago
    The solution was nearly always to create golden packages which could be summarised. XMPP v1 server could be just XMPP itself. A v2 client/server includes packages for OMEMO, Websocket, Resumeable connections A v3 client/server has packages for whatever else becomes the de jour. The idea that you can just mix and match without ever standardising on a set of capabilities was a large part of what killed XMPP and was entirely solvable.

azinman2 6y ago

Where is the open source code for the iMessage bridge?

pseudalopex 6y ago
It doesn't exist yet.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25849040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25849040

nextaccountic 6y ago

Hey, does it support Telegram stickers?

kitkat_new 6y ago
I don't know about the app, but you can use Telegram stickers in Matrix - somewhat. However, it requires a few minutes of work: https://github.com/maunium/stickerpicker https://github.com/maunium/stickerpicker For video watchers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz3H6KJTEI0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz3H6KJTEI0

kitkat_new 6y ago

Kudos to Tulir!!!

raunakdag 6y ago

Do you guys plan on continuing with the jailbreakable iPhone method for iMessage bridging for the foreseeable future, or is there an alternative one can expect that is being worked on?

littlehugie 6y ago

Will you Support Threema in the future?

hans_castorp 6y ago
Came here to ask the same. It would only make sense to me if Threema is also added to the list (Signal already is)

ibeckermayer 6y ago

This is amazing. I had precisely this idea ~6mo ago (but never actually built anything). Excited to see you’ve done all the heavy lifting for me. I also love the paid model to align interests and the ability to self host. I will definitely be giving this a test run.

liminalsunset 6y ago

On the website it looks like it says Android and iOS via Element [appears to be the renamed Riot.im matrix client]. Is there no custom iOS or Android application for Beeper that this will ship with?

GekkePrutser 6y ago
Yeah riot was renamed, as they finally admitted that it was a weird name with negative connotations. Never understood what was wrong with the name vector by the way. That was even nicer IMO.
acct776 6y ago
Why would you want that additional attack surface?

spamalot159 6y ago

How does your iMessage integration compare to AirMessage? I've been using AirMessage for a couple months now on my new Android phone and it is about 80% reliable. Images and videos also take significantly longer to processes than if I were to use an iPhone. I wonder if Beeper would be an upgrade over AirMessage or if it is essentially the same.

pseudalopex 6y ago
Beeper requires a Mac like AirMessage. Or they'll send you a jailbroken iPhone.
- giancarlostoro 6y ago
  How old are these iPhones cause that's the oddest part of that setup I've heard.
  - pseudalopex 6y ago
    iPhone 4.[1] [1] https://twitter.com/ericmigi/status/1351934418961661959 https://twitter.com/ericmigi/status/1351934418961661959
    - giancarlostoro 6y ago
      Thanks for that! It's kind of funny to me, but also kind of cool. I guess you just have to be sure to charge the iPhone every now and then.
      - pseudalopex 6y ago
        I think the idea is you leave it plugged in at home.
- SulfurHexaFluri 6y ago
  How is imessage so hard to reverse engineer that its easier to send someone a jailbroken iphone to use? Surely the protocol can't even change much since many users are stuck on old versions as its part of the OS.

bluesmoon 6y ago

As an answer to your first question: Between 2000-2003, I worked on components of the cross protocol IM backend used by many of the multi-protocol messengers back in the early to mid 2000s (eg: Adium, Trillian, Fire, Ayttm, and more). Each of the frontends had different ways to integrate. Trillian used 2 processes with TCP communication between them to get around the GPL licensed backend), Fire, Adium, Ayttm released everything under the GPL. Eventually most clients moved to using libpurple as the backend (developed by the team behind Gaim), but the devs also started getting older, busier, and having other responsibilities outside of work. The only apps to survive were those that had a business model that allowed them to reuse open source code without having to release any of the code they developed themselves. I personally stopped working on instant messaging in April 2004, the night before I became a Yahoo employee, though I continued blogging and doing conference talks about the experience: - https://tech.bluesmoon.info/2004/09/fallback-messaging.html https://tech.bluesmoon.info/2004/09/fallback-messaging.html - https://tech.bluesmoon.info/2011/05/story-of-george-ayttms-most-prolific.html https://tech.bluesmoon.info/2011/05/story-of-george-ayttms-m... - https://tech.bluesmoon.info/2010/11/stream-of-collaboration-and-unified.html https://tech.bluesmoon.info/2010/11/stream-of-collaboration-...

est31 6y ago
It's not just about devs getting older and busier, but also about networks becoming openly hostile towards third party client implementations. There used to be a healthy ecosystem of Whatsapp client libraries, but they have gotten takedowns, and their users bans. Eventually people give up. Some few individuals build third party implementations but keep them secret so that there is no retribution (I remember reading about a guy blogging about a self made iMessage client).
- Arathorn 6y ago
  Thankfully the EU is moving rapidly towards making that sort of behaviour illegal, which as a knock-on effect should improve the situation for the world in general. https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/euro...

pinusc 6y ago

As someone who self-hosts a bunch of bridges–great work! Really appreciate seeing a simple solution for people who don't know or don't want to self host. Also, seeing that Tulir is not working entirely pro-bono but that his efforts are backed by a company makes me more hopeful that the bridge development will continue!

NikolaNovak 6y ago

This feels too good to be true. It feels a "Shut up and take my money". I thought with effective demise of XMPP and myriad differing standards and proprietary apps & protocols, this could not happen anymore. I'll check out your site and you may have some very happy paid users soon :)

StavrosK 6y ago

I would love to pay you for this (though I think $10 is a bit steep), but I don't want you to be able to read my messages, which you are since you run the bridges.

acct776 6y ago
Is it possible to build a zero-trust version of this?
- eps 6y ago
  No. Bridges need plaintext messages, because that's what they feed into WhatsApp and other clients.
  - kitkat_new 6y ago
    Can't you put the bridges on a pi, like described at the website?
- kitkat_new 6y ago
  see the self hosting options
acct776 6y ago
Also, didn't they say something about being able to run the full stack self-hosted?

pimeys 6y ago

Thank you for Pebble! It was my main Diabetes app for seeing the current blood glucose directly from my wrist until my Pebble 2 finally died a year ago. It was almost like magic and had a week of battery life. The commercial matrix bridge is an excellent idea. I was able to get my homeserver running, but it is a hell of a job to get everything working. When it does work, oh boy, it again feels like magic!

erohead 6y ago
So good to hear that! Have you considered buying one off ebay? Still some good deals there :)

GekkePrutser 6y ago

Wasn't this NovaChat before? I signed up for the beta and was thinking of planning a session with you for enrolment as you mentioned in your last email, hasn't had time yet, sorry. Saw it here at the last HN post. If it's available now I'll gladly use it. Since the Whatsapp thing a couple weeks ago even more of my contacts have spread out to different apps and it drives me nuts. Pricing sounds good too, I know these bridges need work to maintain. I've tried to run them myself using the docker script but it's not ideal. And supporting the maintenance is great.

erohead 6y ago
Yes, Beeper is the new name for NovaChat.
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  Ok, great, I like the new name a lot better! It was just funny when I read it first, I thought someone else had the same idea :)

p00f 6y ago

What are the system requirements for self-hosting?

modeless 6y ago

I would love for this to keep expanding to more inboxes, and beyond to news feeds and other kinda inbox-shaped things. Why not aggregate Facebook news feed, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, HN, your local newspaper, etc. It's what Google Reader woulda/coulda/shoulda become. Please, break down the walled gardens. Free us from the whims of the product managers pumping out redesign after redesign for all the services we use.

spondyl 6y ago

Having actually run through spantaleev's matrix-docker-ansible-deploy twice in the past, and run the Matrix bridge stack for a few months each time, this is interesting. Eventually I would have some bridges get out of sync (ie I responded on mobile but the bridge doesn't show my message or messages would get lost) but overall, it worked really well. The downside of having one error in relative isolation is not the bug itself but that it makes you distrust the stack entirely and you end up double checking the source messenger "just to make sure" Having said that, it looks like you've done quite a bit of development on the bridges from a quick glimpse of the Gitlab repos. How are those forks related to Tulir's bridges? Does he integrate any of your changes and vice versa or are they two unique development streams? In your comment, it sounds like Tulir is working with you? Anyway, I'm looking forward to this very much because the multi-messenger thing has been the bane of my existence, I swear. I would gladly pay $10/month to fix this as I have online (and offline) friends all over the place. Oh, for the unified inbox, is there any way to "group" by a person? For example, if I primarily chat with someone on Line but then occasionally talk through iMessage. I would expect them to render as two different "conversations" but logically, they're one person of course. Lastly, I thought the line about shipping an iPhone was satire. You might want to put a note in there like "No really".

erohead 6y ago
Tulir is on the Beeper team, he's the one writing all the bridges! They are quite reliable now.
- spondyl 6y ago
  Ahh, I think I was a little confused. I had noted that there were "forks" on Gitlab but they're actually just mirrors it looks like so fork is perhaps a misnomer in this case on the part of Gitlab? Also curious to know what the schedule is like for people to sign up? I seemingly never received anything that states I'm on a waitlist or just that my sign up didn't generally go into a blackhole.

jimbob45 6y ago

I thought Apple barred iMessages from being sent/retrieved outside of the specific iMessage app? How did you dodge that?

el_dev_hell 6y ago
Apparently: How in the world did you get iMessage to work on Android and Windows? This was a tough one to figure out! Beeper has two ways of enabling Android, Windows and Linux users to use iMessage: we send each user a Jailbroken iPhone with the Beeper app installed which bridges to iMessage, or if they have a Mac that is always connected to the internet, they can install the Beeper Mac app which acts as a bridge.
- jimbob45 6y ago
  Hmmm, you could pretty easily spin up a Mac container with the Beeper app and then remote into that from your phone. Seems like a lot of work. Still, it seems like they didn't really dodge anything at all. It's the same gripe I had with Signal: if I have to switch between iMessage and Signal, then I'll never be able to sell Signal to my family.
  - aquaticsunset 6y ago
    I'm not sure if this project will go any further, nor if iMessage works inside here, but this is an easier way forward: https://github.com/popey/sosumi-snap https://github.com/popey/sosumi-snap

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

Question: If you already have bridges in place to send and receive messages in other clients, is there any reason I can't chat from those clients? In other words, I want to be able to use the Messages app on my iPhone to communicate with other people using Discord, WhatsApp, Slack, etc. I would absolutely pay $10 a month for that, and I almost never subscribe to anything! Is that something you could turn on, or is it more complicated than I'm imagining? P.S. I'm wearing a Pebble 2 right now. Thanks for all your work on that, it's a great device. Edit: Actually, even just some sort of XMPP gateway, so I could use any client that supports XMPP, would basically be enough for me.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
...as I think about this more, could I, uh, just in general get more detail on what clients can be used? Asking as someone who has never used Matrix before.

Aeolun 6y ago

I would really like one of these apps to integrate with LINE, which is really big in Japan. Every time I see something like this I check again, but it’s so far never been supported.

nimbleal 6y ago
I was about to comment the same, but with Wechat. I can’t not use wechat, much as I’d like to. I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t significantly more difficult/impossible to integrate though.
kixiQu 6y ago
I would pour my own blood into a Dockerfile to have the LINE stickers in Matrix.

filmor 6y ago

I think part of the problem is that there is no infrastructure for something like this on iOS and Android. With webOS, there was a single messaging app that integrated SMS, Skype, Facebook and Google. The latter part was implemented using libpurple, so it was relatively easy to extend this to all messaging that libpurple supports. I really liked that approach (marketing name was "Synergy", unified messaging was only a small part of this), but it's quite obvious that neither Apple nor Google have any interest in adopting this unified approach for anything but their respective own messaging of the day.

kevincox 6y ago
I think if we could get the world unified on a single chat protocol we can expect things like this to emerge. Of course it will be unlikely to happen soon, if at all. Plus we all know that Google really wants to own a chat app so maybe they will decide not to make it first-class in Android i fit seems like a threat.
- acct776 6y ago
  Some big NGOs and world governments are getting on the Matrix train, and the name is dope, don't count that for 0.
- filmor 6y ago
  Well, it's become quite clear that this unified protocol will never happen :) I'd rather be prepared to use different protocols in a sensible way.
acct776 6y ago
We could always start building on webOS again, it's open now, right?
- filmor 6y ago
  There are people working on this: https://webos-ports.org https://webos-ports.org A few years ago I was in contact with someone from the project to integrate the changes that I did, so their messaging client should now support pretty much everything that Pidgin supports (which, as I learned today, nowadays includes Matrix, Signal, Telegram and Steam as well through plugins). Maybe I should install that on my old Nexus 4 and see how far they got... :)

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

Nicely done, congratulations on the launch! This brings back memories. In 2017 I had launched a similar 'chat-app network' platform[1] for privacy focused dating using Bot API of the respective platforms allowing communication between, Messenger <-> Telegram <-> Viber <-> LINE It was quickly selected for acceleration by one of those platforms. The features included half-duplex messaging(user had to wait for reply to send a message to prevent harassment), optional location, near-far dates switch etc. Adoption was quick, the first major issue I ran into was that in SE Asian countries many used their children photographs for profile picture in chat apps, which obviously was a no go for dating, so I had to implement Amazon Rekognition to detect age and make those users change their profile picture and their profiles weren't displayed until it was changed. At peak it processed 200,000 images/month. Obviously bridge approach as in Beeper(Matrix) is a more reliable approach than using Bot API, especially due to UI/UX limitations and even platform stability issues(Some bot API were nascent). In about a year it even crossed the Trough of Sorrow with ~2,40,000 users on Messenger alone.[2] But had to let go of it as I fell sick(was told I could become quadriplegic[3]) and as single founder bus factor hit my startup. I received several offers to buy the platform, but I didn't sell it as I was not sure whether the buyers would stick to the privacy promises. So I just nuked the platform. Even if I had continued, I'm not sure whether I could have monetized successfully as selling digital content was explicitly prohibited by these platforms because of Apple Tax/Google Tax(it would mean that the chat apps function as app store). [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeuL8_Qinhs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeuL8_Qinhs [2]https://web.archive.org/web/20181203031208/https://finddate.co/goodbye-finddate-is-shutting-down/ https://web.archive.org/web/20181203031208/https://finddate.... [3]https://abishekmuthian.com/i-was-told-i-would-become-quadriplegic-68c0371e6f05/ https://abishekmuthian.com/i-was-told-i-would-become-quadrip...

mail2merge 6y ago

This is good. What competitors do you fear? Also, why no WeChat? The stickers are the best there !

alex_duf 6y ago

I'm glad to see a paid for service, by I don't think I'd take the jump for $10 a month! >(from the website) we send each user a Jailbroken iPhone with the Beeper app installed which bridges to iMessage Aren't you worried about Apple's reprisal ? Also it might be worth adding a word about the privacy of the messages. Am I correct that the end to end encryption goes out the window and each Matrix connector can see the messages in plain text? I think it's not so much an issue as long as it's clear to the user, and that they pay for you to keep their private messages private.

LordOfWolves 6y ago
I'm also curious about Beeper's plan re: potential response/pushback from Apple and the status of (likely broken?) E2E in iMessage.
- Spivak 6y ago
  If I backup my WhatsApp messages in plaintext or screenshot my iMessage it’s still E2E. Once the message is delivered all bets are off. Forwarding all my messages to some 3rd party service doesn’t break E2E anymore then forwarding them to my friends.
harlanji 6y ago
I’m homeless and pay $10/mo for a terminal app. The value is in the eye of the beholder... FWIW I used to be a pretty well paid software engineer, and I run as much of my personal IT as possible... so for me, the $10/mo is worth it to save seconds 100s of times per month and make hours of experience per month pleasant.
swiley 6y ago
>>(from the website) we send each user a Jailbroken iPhone with the Beeper app installed which bridges to iMessage Is there really something that makes iMessage so difficult to reverse engineer that this is considered economical? People were able to write AIM clients 20 years ago, what special trick has Apple used?

hartem_ 6y ago

Congrats on the launch! Subscribed and can't wait to get access :). Do you know what is WhatsApp's stance on a Matrix bridge and using it to provide a service? They've known to have a pretty harsh stance on other services that attempted to integrate ([0], [1]) and even banned users from the platform for attempting to scrape their own data. Would be very curious to know more details about your WhatsApp integration setup. Thanks in advance! [0] - https://www.xda-developers.com/whatsapp-sends-cease-desist-apps-native-android-api/ https://www.xda-developers.com/whatsapp-sends-cease-desist-a... [1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/89g926/whatsapp_cease_and_desist_letter_forces_removal/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/89g926/whatsapp_...

pabs3 6y ago

libpurple (the thing behind Adium/Pidgin) has plugins for a lot of the major messaging networks today.

aeoleonn 6y ago

In the FAQ, I'd suggest adding the words price & pricing. That way I can ctrl-f to either "price", or "pricing". To my weird brain, and after studying accounting, the word "cost" is more of a business/accounting perspective of "expense". Whereas the word "price" seems to be more of a consumer perspective of "expense". Yes, it's a little pedantic ;) Cost: "(of an object or action) require the payment of (a specified sum of money) before it can be acquired or done." Price: "the amount of money expected, required, or given in payment for something." I think it's because: Costing = Accounting. It's the "science" of determining the expense of producing a product or service. Pricing = Marketing. Marketing is what consumers experience.