While checking the state of Jami on Trisquel 8, I got a non-blocking bug when
trying to display the keyboard shortcut window:
https://git.jami.net/savoirfairelinux/ring-client-gnome/issues/1120
Appart from that very minor glitch (which will probably be resolved soon
either by removing the faulty feature or through a quick fix) and the same
bit of confusion as Strypey (and Rached?) seem to have gone through while
installing, things are working smoothly.
--
One friend who accepted to test it on his [propietary] OS was less lucky
however, and has already decided to throw it away. It is already difficult to
tell people to be patient with libre tools in the making, especially those
who kindly accept to play around with our last choice of a messaging app, but
the disappointment seems to have been triggered by the very nature of
Ring/Jami: decentralized and DHT-based networking.
Average users might not understand, or simply accept, perceptible delays
simply for finding someone on the network. Users with a higher level of
patience might not find it much annoying given the huge benefits of a
decentralized commmunication structure but still, being able to communicate
easily with people on a slow internet connection, or with people who have no
clue about any technical or social issues is also part of the goal. Which
makes me wonder whether the ups of distributed networking might not be
hindered by the difficulty of adoption.
Anyway, the Jami client will also be improving in time on all the platforms
it is available for, so adoption might follow suit. The other concern I have
about the way it works now is that it lacks a contact identification
mechanism: someone tells me their username, I send a text message, and we
both are added to our respective rosters. There is no way to check the
identity of the actual account holder, both at first contact and any time
later. Some stranger already (inadvertantly) tried to start chatting with me,
and though I did not find that highly frightening I still find it surprising
in the context of a secure messaging app. That decentralization is adding
latency is only about the laws of physics, that softs have bugs is only
human, but random people allowed by design to reach you directly by your user
name?
Years ago I had a try at Retroshare, which seemed to go the right way for
private and authenticated connections while also going the opposite way of
public and anonymous connections. Since I am not interested in massive
sharing of copyrighted material, I do not see the need for the latter and it
somehow goes in the way of the former. Does anyone know of a Retroshare
without the public/anonymous (large) bit?
(Sorry this went much further than initially intended, maybe I should create
a separate thread for the more general considerations about a libre,
decentralized, independent, platform-agnostic messaging app)
