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Your thoughts on Beeper
(beehaw.org)
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this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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Privacy
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Doesn't look like it's FOSS, so I'm not even going to bother trying it.
The clients are closed source, but they use Matrix bridges to connect to various messaging services, and those are in fact open sourced.
Sorry, just want to make sure others read this properly. I think you meant
They are closed source forks of Element's desktop/mobile/web apps.
Woops, yes indeed, I just corrected my comment!
So why not just use a Matrix client?
Because you'd need to do all the bridges for other clients yourself. There was a post somehwere here on how to do that a few days ago ... and it looked complicated.
There are quite a few public servers that have bridges implemented. Sadly the official server list does not say which of them has bridges but just check the websites of some and pick one you like.
So basically, Beeper just hosts a bunch of Matrix bridges and has an app for their server? Can you use their service with another Matrix client?
importantly though Beeper also built a lot of the bridges and maintain a lot more as FOSS
unsure about using a FOSS client with their service, but you can definitely use a FOSS client with their bridges that you host yourself and it’s functionally very similar AFAIK
it's so weird then to make the app closed source. I would guess that a lot of potential users would care about this and are unhappy with that …
i think it makes sense... that’s the pattern with a lot of FOSS but for-profit: make the hard (but generic) functionality FOSS and then make your “skin” that ties it all together, thing that makes it pretty, the differentiator closed and sell that