On Ricochet's Future

[increasingawareness]

note: I intend this post to be a conversation thread about the features and future of this project. If it is in the wrong place, I apologize and feel free to close the issue.

Features

Ricochet is probably one of the best private communication tools available to the general public at this time (metadata free, distributed, etc.) and I personally appreciate the amount of work that has gone into this project (I use Ricochet everyday). However, the direction of this project (integrating file sharing, group chats, etc.) while useful, is missing something critical in the IM game. And that is replacing IRC. A distributed, encrypted, and Tor network driven IRC alternative with an easy to use GUI would be revolutionary in creating privacy friendly chatroom idling. I know that this is an ambitious goal to be sure. IMO, creating a chatroom feature akin to IRC is probably one of the most important features that could be added to the current Ricochet protocol. Other features that I think are important to the project:

• @s-rah 's port of Ricochet to the Go programming language
• Creating a mobile version
• Inline images/files
• Markdown support
• Private group chat
• Multiple Aliases

Replacing Proprietary Apps

If you haven't read the discussion between Moxie Marlinspike and the developers of libresignal, you should. After reading it, don't you get the sense that Ricochet really could be that next generation communication tool? After all, Signal and Libresignal still work in a (mostly) federated way (as opposed to Ricochet's superior distributed design) and both of them are not metadata free. We know that metadata is really really bad. Also this quote from "Don't Panic. Making Progress on the 'Going Dark' Debate" is relevant:

Metadata is not encrypted, and the vast majority is likely to remain so. This is data that needs to stay unencrypted in order for the systems to operate: location data from cell phones and other devices, telephone calling records, header information in email, and so on. This information provides an enormous amount of surveillance data that was unavailable before these systems became widespread.

The end user shouldn't have to go to great lengths just to have a truly private conversation. If Ricochet could integrate these types of features, I could imagine it being able to replace whatsapp, IRC, Discord, kik, etc. Getting people to actually switch from said proprietary apps would be difficult for sure, but the change would be able to happen in the FOSS community first (imagine freenode being replaced with Ricochet) and then propagate out to the end users (hey, I just got my mom on ricochet, it's great in terms of usability!).

Ideas For Growth

I get that there an enormous amount of problems, and if indeed the Ricochet project wants to go in these directions, it will take years to complete these features. But if the project integrates things like:

• Bounty Source's Salt Program
• Formal support from the Tor Project
• People like me who are inspired by privacy tools like Ricochet pick up coding and commit to the project

Ricochet will have a heck of a lot more development over a shorter amount of time.

Thoughts?

[mva1985]

Well stated. I've always thought IRC needed something more privacy wise.

I love ricochet and tox

[linux-modder]

I use tox and ricochet myself and like the ideas mentioned about as well.

[gdrdrposteo]

Personally I'd like to learn where to start to contribute code to Ricochet someday. I'm just a lay person who's as enthusiastic as you guys.

[afk11]

I'm thinking of writing some small applications which leverage ricochet. One that seems universally useful is a ricochet bouncer.

The protocol leaks that a user is online before any authentication can happen, and the ricochet client doesn't tell the user about this. This is bad for people who don't want to be associated with their nick, since uptime + surveillance can correlate identities pretty quickly.

It'd be nice to give users the bouncer address, have it manage clients, then collect message or directly chat when back online.

[bithurder]

I like the bouncer idea... did you ever start that effort or is somebody else working on it?

[afk11]

I ran into something stupid, need to fix it before I finish a re-implementation of the protocol. Probably better off if someone picks this up using the golang library?

[ghost]

To make Ricochet famous, you need to split current code into two:

ricochet-core: a core of ricochet. (sample: "toxcore") rico: a Linux/Windows Client using ricochet-core. (sample: qTox uTox Antox...)

@special and @ricochet-im might want to focus on "core" development first. And other people can join to GUI development(like "rico" above), like Antox and qTox.

[ghost]

For example, if there is simple "ricochet-core", I could make a bot for myself...

#include <ricochet_core.c> #include ... ricochet_connect() or halt_process; if (ricochet_isUserOnline(TARGET_USER)){ ricochet_sendmessage(TARGET_USER,$text as string) return 0; }else{ return 1; }

[CR0CKER]

I wish Ricochet was getting the kind of attention and momentum that Matrix/Riot is getting. Totally agree that scalable multi-user chats like what IRC allows for would be an important feature to turn it from a platform for secret buddies into a platform for large-scale communication among strangers.