Native Viber Client Published For Linux

[Viber]

Hello, thanks for providing native Linux binary!

What would be your counter-arguments to http://viberphoneapp.wordpress.com, especially:
1) What is your company legal address and why is it in Cyprus with PO?
2) Where does your financial support come from. For example, similar application, ICQ, which founder was also living in Israel at least made revenue by ads.

Sencerely, I was happy to have an alternative to Skype (which doesn't share well-known Skype black points), and then this.

Please comment, thank you.




You must have confused "Brains or GTFO", because you absolutely have no brains.
1) Its communication software
2) Its closed source
1+2 a person of 20 IQ should be able to make assumption and at least inform himself, but you instead switch to usuall yelling. Yes, someone wants source, whats wrong about him? If you don't think this way, no one is preventing you to think different or use different OS -> GTFO and don't smoke the sky!

Viber is based in Cyprus with development facilities in Israel and Belarus.

Israel is a source of many technology companies and most of the well established companies like IBM, Microsoft, EMC and others hold a development centers developing technology you are using on a daily basis ( It is not our wish to advocate for Israel in anyway, just to place it in its right place in the technological world).

since we are a privately held company we prefer at the moment not to provide any information on our funding.
we are considering few business models that we believe will drive profit to the company which we will announce it in the coming future,but we will continue to keep our following promises:
1. We will NOT charge for the app
2. We will NOT charge for Viber to Viber calls
3. We will NOT charge for Viber to Viber texts
4. We will NOT advertise on the VIber app.

Like any other application,Viber do have access to data on the device ,we use it simply to provide the user with the best usage experience.

Like any other application, these requirements are clearly available to the user prior to the installation.

Finally, this is our CEO, Mr. Talmon Marco: http://www.mobileworldlive.com/inter...arco-ceo-viber

I invite you to run a quick Google search, and you'll find numerous interviews with him, talking and sharing information about our company, our employees, and our plans.

We hope this helps.

[Ramiliez]

Thank you, now when my mom goes to Germany I can communicate with her more easily, as she uses viber on her phone through the wifi.
To all the people who are upset? Why just dont use it. I dont use viber as my main communication system but my parents and grandma and their friends understand how to use it and they arent going to switch to some opensource system that requires know how to run. So some of us occasionally have to use these type of programs. At least now I dont have to switch to windows to use it.

Relax nobody is upset Only jayrulez is because he failed ignite closed source vs open source troll battle

[Brane215]

Phoronix would vanish from my bookmarks long ago if it werent for the fact that every now and then something intelligent actually emerges among pile of crap.

This time it was the newslet on particulars of terminal abdstraction , VT's and latest developments around concept of sessions etc.

It wasn't that great or in depth, but better than anything I managed to find, so it was this that kept my finger from delete button...

[jayrulez]

Relax nobody is upset Only jayrulez is because he failed ignite closed source vs open source troll battle

No one is trying to ignite any type of open vs closed source battle you idiot. I merely highlighted a paradox and some people felt touchy about it.

I love open source as much as the other man. I also happen to use closed source software (Sue me). It's all just software for fuck sake. Use it or don't use. The choice couldn't be simpler.

[erendorn]

No one is trying to ignite any type of open vs closed source battle you idiot. I merely highlighted a paradox and some people felt touchy about it.

I love open source as much as the other man. I also happen to use closed source software (Sue me). It's all just software for fuck sake. Use it or don't use. The choice couldn't be simpler.

Let it go. I fully agree with your points, but after reading the last 5 pages, it does not seem very worthwhile to discuss it in this thread.

[cyclothunder]

Viber security

Hello all.

Just saw phoronix's article about viber's client for linux and register the forum to post this.
What you guys think? Is it safe to use Viber??

link: http://viberphoneapp.wordpress.com/tag/security/

[stqn]

Hello all.

Just saw phoronix's article about viber's client for linux and register the forum to post this.
What you guys think? Is it safe to use Viber??

link: http://viberphoneapp.wordpress.com/tag/security/

It?s closed source, so no it?s not safe.

[DrYak]

The only way to guarantee privacy is open source. We need open protocols for VoIP with encryption as default. Maybe something that tunnels via SSH or something like that.

for guaranteed privacy, luckily there are already a few standards like ZRTP/SRTP and OTR.


ZRTP/SRTP is a standard about how to establish an encrypted media channel (audio or video) over any standard RTP media channel. So you can already use it with any RTP-based audio/video protocol.
For exemple, Jingle/XMPP uses RTP for audio/video calls, so two users of google talk can call each other securely, as long as both ends use software with support for ZRTP (and as long as Google still keeps the XMPP gateway running while consolidating their services as Hangout).
As another example, the SIP standard for VoIP used by virtually "any other VoIP provider except Skype and Viber" also uses RTP for its media channels. So it's possible for to users of the same sip service (or even users of 2 different services allowing call between them, like iptel and ekiga) to call securly, as long as both use a ZRTP supporting software.

Jitzi and Twinkle are 2 exemple of software supporting such encryption.
(Note: Ekiga doesn't have it yet, but it's planned for a future version)


OTR is a standard about encrypting text-messages over any channel transmitting regular text-messages. As long as a protocol has a system to transmit text messages, and both ends have OTR, messages can be securely sent and received. (That even means it's possible to sent encrypted message over the Skype netword, as long as encryption happens in a layer above, before sending the encrypted form to Skype through Skype API to send on the network). (Of course, if you use OTR on Google Talk, Facebook and Skype, the history on these platforms looks like garbage, only the OTR supporting local software gets the clear message)

Jitzi, Pidgin, Adium, and lots of other do support OTR, either out of the box, or through plugins.


in short: opensource end-to-end encryption of both text and audio/video is possible as of *TODAY* while running over protocol for which you probably have an account (Google, Facebook, etc.)

I've been thinking about a peer-to-peer communication network.

you might be interested to look into sipwitch.
it works using the already industry standard SIP.
But instead of connecting to some central server on the internet, you connect to a daemon running locally and handling the VoIP network in a distributed manner.


In short:
- it is possible to have decent opensource end-to-end encryption over several existing popular services AS OF TODAY.
- distributed networks are being in the design/building stage.
- what we need is visibility, user friendliness and marketing (Jitsi is a nice step in right direction).

[smitty3268]

Hmm

So today i was talking with somebody and they brought up Viber out of the blue. Said they were using it to communicate with family in the phillipines, and it was working great.

That was the windows version, but i just wanted to put it out there. I'd never heard of Viber before, but it sounds like they're on the edge of becoming mainstream.