Me trying to explain to someone over Email why I started the Salty IM project:
First off, you must excuse me because it’s been some years since I last tried Tox.
I therefore can’t say too much about it right now. I had to re-read the Wikipedia page on it, and whilst it sounds good in theory, there was probably a good reason I dismissed it and ceased using it some years ago. Maybe it had something to do with poor client support? (e.g: No iOS client to spread of).Anyway… Matrix…
I actually tried [Matrix][Matrix=] for a week or so. Initially I had a lot of trouble getting it up and running (using Dendrite). After some “behind the scenes” magic of bad keys being cached in the network things suddenly started working. :D
The thing about Matrix is this:
It is an insanely over engineered protocol. As it so happens, the project is “trying” to be a generic “data synchronization” for the web :O
Putting that aside for a moment, some of my observations of the architecture and protocols are:
- It takes ~30s to join a room with just 1 person (1:1)
- It takes ~15m to join a medium sized room !
The thing is Matrix (nor Tor) really satisfy my requirements (not anything else for that matter).
My requirements are quite simple:
- It must be self-hosted first and foremost.
1a) Therefore it must be decentralised
- It must be easy to stand up and operate
- It must be easy to use
- It must be secure and private
- It must support “supervised” accounts
The last point is really important to me. I have two young children that are reaching a curious point in their lives and want to do things like Chat on the Internet with Mum/Dad and their friends (at some point). I imagine they’ll also want to get involved in Social Media too (thankfully I’ve solved that already with Yarn.social)
I hope I did a good job of sharing with you why I’m building Salty IM
#poxg4da