this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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Technology

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I was on the beta testing team and have been using Beeper for a little over two years now.

The convenience of having an application to house all of your chat networks is amazing.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I don't understand the concern here.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You have no way of verifying that the client is only doing what it claims. The Open Source community is highly suspicious of proprietary software, doubly so when it's based off of Open Source code.

If youre okay with that then no worries, but ofr myself and many others it's an absolute deal breaker.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To be fair, the client they provide to make bridging more accessible is proprietary, however you can fire up a fresh copy of element and connect it if you want and just use the text interface.

The clients are closed so that they have something to sell and profit. Not everyone can afford to give their time away for free.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

you can fire up a fresh copy of element and connect it if you want

you kind of omitted the part where you have to host your own Matrix server in order to benefit from the bridges.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Is there a reason you couldn't use either use a self hosted or the public hosted copy of element or an Android/iOS app and connect it directly to the beeper synapse/dendrite server?

Their clients are just closed forks of element anyways.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I'll take the risk knowing what I know about the Beeper people that I've been working with for over two years.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago

“I know these guys, trust me” is not a valid security assessment.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

If you know the team, then that's a pretty good reason to trust them. Only works if you know the team, though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That's fine... for you, right now.

But I (and probably most users) don't know them, over time people come and go, some even change who they are, businesses get sold. Only open source persists.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thankfully all of the Matrix bridges they created for Beeper are open source.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Ok, ok, I get it... but I'm still wary of a business model based on closed clients. Guess we'll see how it goes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Sounds reasonable to me