Sounds similar to already existing Open-Source projects, like Tox[1] (which was discussed on HN a couple months ago[2].)
Questions for both projects still remain though: What sort of metadata can be collected from users of these programs? How can that metadata be used? Are there any security vulnerabilities that have been overlooked?
We are still a ways from having truly secure chat as the mainstream communication medium, but I'm glad Bittorent and others are helping move it in the right direction.
The problem I have with Tox is that it's 90% hype and 10% product. They spent all their time working on a nice website and building hype. That "screenshot" on the front page is a mockup, the Tox project isn't even close to that degree of completion.
I'd love to see them succeed, but I doubt it will. Especially with the recent falling-out among their primary developers.
Development is actually going fairly well. It's just that there's a whole bunch of changes that haven't been pulled to the main repository, but there's definite progress with streaming media and other aspects.
Sure, they haven't polished the GUI to look like the mock-up yet. And they don't quite have video chat, though they are working on it. But what they do already have is what Bittorrent is promising to deliver "soon", and it is actually open-source!
Questions for both projects still remain though: What sort of metadata can be collected from users of these programs? How can that metadata be used? Are there any security vulnerabilities that have been overlooked?
We are still a ways from having truly secure chat as the mainstream communication medium, but I'm glad Bittorent and others are helping move it in the right direction.
[1] https://github.com/irungentoo/ProjectTox-Core [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6121225