There are now 15 competing standards.
this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2021
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Libre Software
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"Libre software" means software that respects users' freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.
In particular, four freedoms define Free Software:
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
Placing restrictions on the use of Free Software, such as time ("30 days trial period", "license expires January 1st, 2004") purpose ("permission granted for research and non-commercial use", "may not be used for benchmarking") or geographic area ("must not be used in country X") makes a program non-free.
The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs.
Placing legal or practical restrictions on the comprehension or modification of a program, such as mandatory purchase of special licenses, signing of a Non-Disclosure-Agreement (NDA) or - for programming languages that have multiple forms or representation - making the preferred human way of comprehending and editing a program ("source code") inaccessible also makes it proprietary (non-free). Without the freedom to modify a program, people will remain at the mercy of a single vendor.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
Software can be copied/distributed at virtually no cost. If you are not allowed to give a program to a person in need, that makes a program non-free. This can be done for a charge, if you so choose.
The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
Not everyone is an equally good programmer in all fields. Some people don't know how to program at all. This freedom allows those who do not have the time or skills to solve a problem to indirectly access the freedom to modify. This can be done for a charge.
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Before anyone tries this, keep in mind that the Tox developers have publicly admitted that they themselves do not know how their encryption works.
See the issues linked from here: https://github.com/TokTok/c-toxcore#-1
This hadn't been emphasized or recognized enough, since Tox has showed up more than a couple of times when discussing private messaging. It so happens the current implementation lacks audits and scrutiny, and shouldn't be considered safe enough for relevant contents. And it had stayed like that for years now, which is sad, given how promising Tox looked. One can take a look at the issues mentioned in the Warning message, and get into subsequent/linked issues and discussions to find out...
tox isnt close to being new its been around for years
Yes, it is certainly not new, but most alternatives are discontinued or being replaced by proprietary alternatives and/or often paid ones. Tox is one of the few that continues to develop actively, for this reason I have thought of posting it for those who do not know it. Besides, it is still a good and valid app.
New to me! Thanks for sharing. That person just wants to argue semantics.
XMPP and Matrix are very much still in development.
They don't have onion routing etc though, so they are a somewhat different class of messenger. They work through Tor, but typically aren't used that way.
Yes, various clients support Tor and can even use servers that are hosted as hidden services: https://gist.github.com/dllud/a46d4a555e31dfeff6ad41dcf20729ac
That's pretty cool, ngl
New to me! Thanks for sharing. That person just wants to argue semantics.
Last time I tried tox on my mobile phone, it unluckily drained the battery too much. But it already looked very promising.
trifa (android client) supports unified push
I found 'qTox' to be a good client for Windows. for android there is 'aTox'.
the experience is good with the Windows Client. (aTox does not support Voice and Video call yet. And there is no Tox Id Qr code in the aTox app. qTox has all these features.)