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What are some open source projects that had substantial initial releases or updates that seemingly came out of nowhere? (leminal.space)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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With a lot of open source projects being worked on largely out of passion rather than financial gain I feel like there must have been several times where a release caught people off guard and "came out of nowhere" with its impressive scale.

To give some examples of how this might happen maybe it was an initial release dropped to the public in a complete state that had been worked on for a while privately or a project that was dormant for an extended period of time and picked back up.

Can anyone here think of an example? It doesn't necessarily need to be something groundbreaking maybe it got people excited in a very specific niche.

If you do have an answer I'd appreciate it if you could elaborate on it.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Wire's new app just got pushed to fdroid. It was all but broken for a few years with no new updates on fdroid

Update: Wire is probably the best encrypted messaging app. Its free, has no phone number requirement, has Foss apps on all platforms, messages sync on all platforms seamlessly, and all messages are encrypted (its not possible to send unencrypted).

https://wire.com

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Interesting. Since the CEO of Telegram was arrested in France last month, I’ve read countless threads on c/privacy about which messaging app is best for privacy, and the two names that seem to come up the most are Signal and any Matrix client (e.g. Element); however, some commenters point out Signal’s phone number requirement and I forget what the other caveats are.

I don’t recall reading about Wire in any of those threads, but at a glance it seems to check all the boxes (open source, always-on encryption, etc).

Am I missing something? Any ideas why this app wouldn’t come up in such discussions?

EDIT: Hmm, I just went back and re-read a thread from last week, and Wire is actually mentioned. Maybe I’ve just always mentally skipped over it until now.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Some people don't like them because the fdroid app wasn't updated for years. I actually started migrating to Matrix because if this, but I really don't like that matrix sends a lot of data unencrypted.

Now that Wire is pushing updates to fdroid again, I don't see much valid criticism

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Gotcha. So is Wire like, the privacy seeker’s dream messaging app? No phone number, always-on encryption, zero-knowledge servers, open source… any caveats?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Caveat..only some of your friends will actually install it?

But, yeah, its been my app of choice for years. Its definitely the best imo