On Sun, Apr 05, 2020 at 11:21:11PM -0400, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote: > I would much rather it was possible to do my email, social media and > conferencing through a single app that was not the same app as my Web > browser. I don't want my contacts information to share an address space > with active code from a Web site. I don't want my private keys or my > plaintext messages sharing context either. > > We need an open standard for such a client. Because that is the only way > users can be assured the client they are downloading hasn't got a backdoor. > It isn't a perfect guarantee but it is better than the situation I have now > where my messaging provider reconfigures its app every ten days or so. > Being forced to install code updates from a single source is a security > risk in itself. [...] The problem is that all things infrastructure get commoditized, so there's no easy way to monetize them. No profit -> no product. Clients are infrastructure in this sense, and if you can monetize the service, you can fund open source clients. Peer-to-peer... leaves out or minimizes the service... which further reduces opportunities for monetization. What's the answer? I dunno. There are multiple business models that could give you what you (and I) want. But it's very challenging. It's just much easier, business-wise, to build a proprietary conferencing/IM system than an open one. > [...]. And don't tell me that frequent updates are necessary for > security, if the code is so buggy it has to have an urgent security patch > more than once a month, you are doing it wrong. Doing it right costs labor, meaning money. See above. Nico --
