[delta-dev] Delta Chat highlights January 2020

Below a little report that was sent to OTF today, telling what was going on in January. FYI we also just closed multi-day gatherings between several Delta Chat contributors in Freiburg ... but this will rather be reported through blog posts and a Feb report. Many many thanks to all the good folks in the "DC Testing group" who spent many hours testing our often buggy pre-releases :) If you are interested to join this testing of pre-releases please send me a mail, also with the platform you could test releases on. ----- Forwarded message from holger krekel <holger(a)merlinux.eu> ----- Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2020 11:36:21 +0100 From: holger krekel <holger(a)merlinux.eu> To: otf-active(a)opentechfund.org, otf-talk(a)opentechfund.org Subject: [OTF-Talk] Delta Chat highlights January 2020 hello all, hope you all had a good start into 2020! :) First some Delta Chat release news across all platforms, then higher level/objective-related happenings, and finally some strategic questions we are facing. For the first time, Delta Chat iOS is now available on the app store, and is reported to work quite well. https://delta.chat/en/2020-01-09-iOS-appstore-release https://apps.apple.com/app/delta-chat/id1459523234 Delta Chat Android 1.1.2 released to Android store with many bug fixes, in-app help and other improvements: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=chat.delta Delta Chat Desktop 0.999.0/.1 prepared (and finally released on Feb 2) implementing In-App Help, fullscreen view for media files, bcc-self setting, better windows support and various internal improvements. https://delta.chat/en/download All releases use the updated and evolving Delta Chat rust core, released as beta24, which improves all platform releases: - reduce traffic: Combine multiple Read-recipets (MDNs) into one message (previously one receipt-message per displayed chat message would be sent) - reduce traffic: reduce gossiping of encryption keys - fix reply-to-encrypted algorithm, which typically leads to more encryption - fix and improve imap-deletion of messages and secure-join messages - fix receiving attachments eg with cyrillic filenames - around 15 PRs with rust-level cleanups in various areas From an objective/higher-level perspective: - UX interviews with journalists/activists/organizers are now complete and report writing is 75% finished. There are several interesting outcomes which will also shape further Delta Chat developments in 2020 -- around providing better support for organizing chats, supporting ephemeral messaging and device modes, and starring/favoriting/saving messages. - Outreach: we have ongoing conversations with activists from several hotspots in eastern europe, asia and the middle east. In particular, Delta Chat is increasingly a real-life option as a complementary messenger during internet shutdowns in several regions. We also entered promising discussions with several universities who want to roll out Delta Chat on campus. We have several new funding opportunities which we continued pursuing, both with human rights organizations and commercial provider entities. We now have a 15-people testing group with activists from global south, Delta Chat enthusiasts and developers who manually test and provide feedback on pre-releases. - Burner Account support is nearing completion -- we have the server side tooling and Android dev release support for arranging setting up one-week accounts that hide metadata. There is a new "Scan QR code" action in the setup screen that allows to setup an account by scanning a paper or online QR code. The account has a random e-mail address and a user can only choose a display "nickname". More in the upcoming blog post (expected February/March). - Onboarding: much improved online FAQ, now available offline/in-app with all releases; improvements to the blog/news web page; a better initial setup experience with guidance on whether Delta Chat is expected to work out of the box, or needs some preparations -- this info is integrated offline, allowing to avoid leaking information to the central mozilla "autoconfig" web site. Provider info is curated and crowd-sourced here: https://providers.delta.chat/ - WebRTC audio/video calls: we now agreed on a clear path how to introduce a/v streaming. Delta Chat apps will do the signalling ("setup call session", "Accept/Decline call session") via the e-mail pipeline, and establish the actual call (P2P) session via the system browser. This requires a configurable server on the side of opening the session. The other side could just use a non-delta chat webmail session then, and still join the call. If possible, we will aim to include "native widgets" at least on mobiles. More details when we do a blog post and first releases. - We aim for fresh releases on all platforms before EasterHegg 2020, and are involved in preparing a game played out at this 1000-hacker twentieth--anniversay gathering in Hamburg. We are to give hands-on sysadmin sessions on burner accounts and e-mail server setups, chat bots and other things. We will also meet there with several people to prepare a bigger event with UX-real-life testing in Eastern Europe. A few open strategic questions currently under discussion: - Which funding efforts are most promising to keep going financially from mid 2020 on? - How can we better support folks in internet-shutdown situations? Namely, how can we introduce POP3 support requested from activists because it would help them during internet shutdown? - How to get the Desktop version to Windows and Mac appstores? eg Apple currently makes it hard to put Elektron-based apps there. And generally buereaucracy is growing in all app stores -- more and more policies, processes and sometimes even videos we are required to produce. This all takes an increasing chunk away from development time. - How can we further improve Continous-Integration? Doing releases is somewhat automated but still requires substantial manual work from 2-3 individuals, making it harder to do "quick releases" and get early feedback. - Which asymetric-organizational features are feasible given the "get everything ready till mid 2020" timeline? - How much can we focus on improving and lifting location-streaming to shift from "experimental" to "production-ready"? - How much can we focus on improving and lifting "verified groups" to shift from "experimental" to "production-ready"? - How to deal with the growing amount of user feedback on the support channels, contact e-mails and github repositories? cheers, holger