Technology

Not sure there is much FUD, let me see if I can sum up the points:

• Beeper devs have written a bunch of bridges between Matrix and other services. ✅ Cool
• They've contributed to Matrix. ✅ Cool
• End-to-end encryption, ends at each bridge server, which needs to decrypt and re-encrypt every message (¹). ❌ Not cool
• They're OpenSource, so anyone can self-host their own bridge. ✅ That's cool... but contrary to the "value proposition" of not having to do so 🤷
• Encryption in anything closed source, like their client, is ❌ not cool... but you can use a different client, so 🤷
• Decryption on not-selfhosted servers, is ❌ not cool... but you can self-host them, so 🤷
• All clients come "preconfigured" for some service 🤷, but theirs is locked to a service. ❌ Not cool
• People using a client with E2EE, get that expectation broken by Beeper (client) users giving their keys to a bridge hosted by a 3rd party. ❌ Not cool
• FUD: The devs' monetization strategy isn't clear. ("premium features" in the client? 🧐)

TL;DR: Sounds like a reasonable way to move unencrypted messages around... but falls short of fixing the problem of having secure interoperable E2EE.

Should they get paid for it? Probably, if you find that useful.

(¹: if there is any bridge capable of forwarding encrypted messages without decrypting, please correct me)

All of that needed to be said. Thank you.

Seems like they did good until now. I'm not confident, even skeptical, that will keep going after the acquisition though.

Gravatar was a great, independent, minimal service. Now it's a horrendous, bloated service.

But don’t services like Discord forbid third party clients?

Me waiting for inflation to slowly increase Discord's yearly revenue until it tips into the legally defined Gatekeeper™ status under the EU Digital Markets Act so they'd be playing with fire if they banned people for using interoperability apps.

I've been using Beeper with a Discord bridge for three years now. No problems.

Beeper isn't a Discord client.

I've been using a Discord bridge with Beeper for three years with no problems.

It's open source, here's the code. It uses the discordgo library to connect to Discord and read your DMs.

e: You're free to download and deploy the source yourself, and write your own ToS. That's the nice part of open source software.

See this comment by @[email protected]

Not closed source. It's just a Matrix server instance running their own bridges. All the backend stuff is open source, the only closed source part is their client.

The client is specific to their site and unnecessary: just deploy Synapse, then pick and deploy the bridges of their suite you want to your server. You can then pick and use any of the available Matrix clients to get the same exact features. You can even sponsor them on Github, as I've been doing for months.

It's not proprietary, lol. You can download and deploy each of their bridges yourself to your own servers.

Source: been using their WhatsApp, Discord, and Signal bridges for over a year. I use Github sponsors to pay for development, as I appreciate how great they are.

The only closed source part of their stack is their client, which you don't have to use.

Also, they're some of the most prolific contributors to Matrix outside of Element. The emoji picker in Element was literally PR'ed by Tulir.

Love it when folk see people trying to make money off OSS and immediately resort to hysterics. It really makes closed source development look appealing if you're going to be damned by idealogues regardless of whether you release the source or not.

This is not applicable here, since Beeper is "just" Matrix + Bridges + Simplified UX!

There is, they just don't publicise it. Actually one of my favourite features of the service tbf. Just load up a web page and all my messages are there, regardless of where they came from.