GNU's Ring Continues Trying To Be Like Skype/WhatsApp For FLOSS/Privacy-Minded Fans

Ring that joined the GNU project in late 2016 to focus on decentralized, multi-device communication has high hopes for 2018.

GNU Ring is still striving as a "free universal distributed communication platform" and to offer similar functionality to say Skype or WhatsApp but while being open-source and respecting the privacy of its users in part by being decentralized.

Ring continues using OpenDHT as a distributed hash table for P2P communication. Ring made a lot of progress in 2017 with its first stable release, porting to more platforms/devices, supporting SIP calls, and a better experience but they hope to make it even more useful and practical this year.

Some of the projects Ring is looking to tackle include automatic video quality handling, P2P file transfer support, improved Telepathy client, connecting Ring to Matrix communication, and offering Ring as a WebRTC-based client.

If you are interested in learning more about this ongoing free software project, Sébastien Blin of Ring presented on the project at this weekend's FOSDEM conference. There are PDF slides of the talk for those interested. The project's primary site for more information continues to be at Ring.cx.