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icke is offline icke
2014-02-23 , 12:33
Posts: 93 | Thanked: 28 times | Joined on Jan 2009 @ Germany
#1
After facebook bought Whatsapp, friends and family started to look for alternatives. As a N9 / Jolla user I brushed it off. Now boingboing reports that WhatsApp issued take-down notices to several Github repositories.. Among them Wazzaps Github repository. Coderus (tmo) aka tgalal writes on the Hacker News thread:
I own 3 of the affected repos:
Yowsup https://github.com/tgalal/yowsup MIT License

It is a library that implements WhatsApp's protocol. It is built on community effort of reverse engineering WhatsApp's protocol. I created this in first place to bring WhatsApp on an unsupported platform (Nokia N9/ meego platform)

Wazapp https://github.com/tgalal/wazapp GPLv2 License

This is a UI frontend to Yowsup for Nokia N9. Nokia N9 is the only smartphone produced by Nokia which never got WhatsApp support. I created this client because I wanted to use WhatsApp on my Nokia N9. The code is totally decoupled from Yowsup, and does not use WhatsApp in its name. You can see its icon here http://everythingn9.com/wp-content/u...2/05/wazapp.pn... which for me looks different enough from official client's icon.

OpenWA https://github.com/tgalal/OpenWhatsappBB10 GPLv3 License

This is also a frontend to Yowsup, but for Blackberry 10. It is a little bit similar case as Wazapp. I created this for BB10 when WhatsApp initially said they're not supporting that platform. Again, this is decoupled from Yowsup, has same icon as Wazapp. Its name though on Github is OpenWhatsappB10, as a project name. However, the real app name is OpenWA. Perhaps a rename of the repository would be sufficient ?
I knew about the grey area that these alternative clients were operating in. What surprises me, thou, is that the takedown notices were apparently issued in the context of the acquisition by the 'hacker' company facebook.

What's your take on this?
icke


P.S.: @Coderus: Can you share someting about your situation and how things evolved?
 

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ladoga is offline ladoga
2014-02-23 , 13:05
Posts: 230 | Thanked: 302 times | Joined on Oct 2009 @ Helsinki, Suomi (Finland)
#2
Sooner you start using open messaging protocol the sooner you can end this cat and mouse game. + Do you expect that facebook will respect your privacy?
Last edited by ladoga; 2014-02-23 at 13:09.
 

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coderus is offline coderus
2014-02-23 , 14:02
Posts: 6,436 | Thanked: 12,699 times | Joined on Nov 2011 @ Ängelholm, Sweden
#3
@icke nothing changed for me
@ladoga how much you think about your privacy when using any IM services? everything you dont own not secure 100% but my position is simple: i'm not paranoid. nobody want to get my poor whatsapp/gtalk/etc. data. i'll continue using popular services, because its easy to communicate with. and i'm not an idiot, i'll never send high-private information which can compromize me via public IM services. It's 0.0001% of my messages and i dont care about switching to any other service. i dont care who is whatsapp owner, i'll continue using it because its still comfortable for me.
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thedead1440 is offline thedead1440
2014-02-23 , 15:36
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#4
Originally Posted by icke View Post
Coderus (tmo) aka tgalal writes on the Hacker News thread
Just a nitpick, coderus =/= tgalal... While both are developers for these 3rd party clients, they are different people
 

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ladoga is offline ladoga
2014-02-23 , 15:49
Posts: 230 | Thanked: 302 times | Joined on Oct 2009 @ Helsinki, Suomi (Finland)
#5
Originally Posted by coderus View Post
@icke nothing changed for me
@ladoga how much you think about your privacy when using any IM services?.
To be honest, not much. But there are people that value their privacy more than me so it's not only about myself.

everything you dont own not secure 100% but my position is simple: i'm not paranoid. nobody want to get my poor whatsapp/gtalk/etc. data.
In light of recent revelations it seems that organizations like NSA want pretty much all the data they can get their hands on. You might be not directly of interest, but given that they map users contacts after 1 or 2 hops there might be someone that is. For example, maybe some contact of your contact is planning a protest and you get automatically flagged as a suspect.

Claiming above would have been seen as paranoia a year ago, but now it's a simple fact of matters:
http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/...2_-_jacob.html

I think that by taking position of not helping these organizations and govenment agencies to collect user data is a small but useful gesture against ever increasing surveillance. But I also agree that most of this boils down to idealism and serves of little practical purpose for most of us. (I'm not saying that idealism is unimportant though)

There are also more practical reasons. With open protocols you atleast know it will be around and accessible for time being, while with closed stuff you're always at whims of owners. If they close a shop then you have to migrate to the next service. Aside from inconvenience all the stuff you built for now abandoned platform will be mostly useless.

i'll continue using popular services, because its easy to communicate with. and i'm not an idiot, i'll never send high-private information which can compromize me via public IM services. It's 0.0001% of my messages and i dont care about switching to any other service. i dont care who is whatsapp owner, i'll continue using it because its still comfortable for me
I think those are all good and valid reasons. Everyone makes their own choices.
Last edited by ladoga; 2014-02-23 at 15:59.
 

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coderus is offline coderus
2014-02-23 , 16:13
Posts: 6,436 | Thanked: 12,699 times | Joined on Nov 2011 @ Ängelholm, Sweden
#6
i'm talking about own experience only and not forcing anyone. my im chat history is very poor to compromize anybody
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icke is offline icke
2014-02-24 , 09:40
Posts: 93 | Thanked: 28 times | Joined on Jan 2009 @ Germany
#7
Thanks a lot for the answers. Again, I learnt a lot =b

I cherished the ability to select persons from my contact list to share with WhatsApp or not. So I selected people, were I was pretty sure they already joined and didn't select people were I knew / suspected they cherish their privacy over the 9ct./sms.

Finally a link via the German site wirres.net to pando daily and WhatsApp's take on privacy.

icke
 
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