- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
Beeper was also acquired by Automattic
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So, it got beat down by Apple, sold, and now it’s open to all? Brilliant.
To be honest, I’m not sure what they were thinking when they released their reverse-engineered iMessage app. But I’m hoping they’re back on two solid feet and will get back to focusing on their original mission because it’ll mean more open source contributions back to the matrix project.
I’m not super excited about them getting bought, but at the same time I think it’s better than the alternative. Beeper’s CEO (now former after being bought) is infamous for creating the startup, Pebble, then running it into the ground by not selling it. As unfortunate as it is, the reality is that companies, even ones based on open source projects, can’t survive without funding.
One positive that came out of the iMessage fiasco was that it brought mainstream attention to Apple’s anticompetitive behavior.
Closed source?
Yes, Beeper’s apps are all closed source. But they do contribute a lot of their improvements back to the matrix community. For example, they’ve contributed quite a few performance improvements to the Synapse homeserver. They’re also involved in getting new features supported on matrix such as media captions.
https://github.com/beeper/bridge-manager
the bridges, and the server components still looks apache 2.0, so you could still self host if this is your kind of crazy, just make sure you use a open source matrix client.
Anyone who cares about privacy and security shouldn’t be running a closed source app that emulates other people’s networks server side.
Removed by mod
You can self host the bridges, but a lot of the “magic” happens on their clients. But if you’re okay with a bit of inconvenience in setting up and bridging services, self-hosting bridges is definitely possible using another matrix client.
Dang I will have to revisit if I want to use beeper. I joined the waitlist months ago and never heard anything, messed with beeper mini for 2 weeks to chat with my family which has only iPhones and that was a good experience. I only want the imessage bridge feature not sure I want to combine all my chats into one app.
But… if you have an android phone and others people are using iPhones, you can still send them SMS and they can answer with SMS, no?
Anyone remember Disa? They had a solid app, but development on it seemed to fizzle.
