I’m currently looking to develop an open source app that can help somebody. I’m currently out of ideas, so I’d like to heard if from you guys.

Sorry if it seems to lazy to ask for ideas like that, I just thought that I could do it since the result will be a free app.

      • delirious_owl
        6·
        7 months ago

        No, I’m not looking for an alternative. I’m looking for an open source client that let’s me talk to folks on WhatsApp.

        • flying_wotsit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          61·
          7 months ago

          ah, hopefully with the Digital Markets Act in the EU, reliable bridging to Matrix with E2EE intact will come quickly. You can already bridge (e.g. I run mautrix-whatsapp), but its not in an ideal state

          • delirious_owl
            2·
            7 months ago

            Even with a matrix bridge, you still have to run WhatsApp – the official closed source client. It doesn’t solve that problem

            I want a way to not have to run closed source software to communicate with users on WhatsApp

        • flying_wotsit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          1·
          7 months ago

          depends what you mean by closer – by features and ease of use, Matrix is the closest you can get to Whatsapp right now. XMPP is good, though!

          • Semperverus@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            7 months ago

            What I mean by closer is code-wise. On the backend, WhatsApp literally uses XMPP. The big difference is that WhatsApp also has a few proprietary plugins, and a singular client that uses these and hides away the fact that it’s all XMPP.

            • toastal@lemmy.ml
              1·
              7 months ago

              That’s why it’s less janky & doesn’t take minutes to join a room unlike Matrix. WhatsApp to the XTENSIBLE part of XMPP & extended it in a proprietary direction, but at least you have the option to easily do so with XML.

              I don’t know what Matrix is giving users other than the eventual consistency model of chat, but most users don’t need the entire chat history of everything—you could argue it is an anti-feature that makes self-hosting too expensive in comparison & also leads to chat overuse/abuse ala Slack/Telegram/Discord where folks treat it as a forum that you can barely search when you have an account while being authenticated & where messages/topics get easily lost. For instance, you can replace an ’announcements room’ with a Atom feed.

            • flying_wotsit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
              1·
              7 months ago

              I’ve been using it as my only form of messaging with most of my contacts for several years, many of whom have little knowledge of technology. It’s really not.

      • delirious_owl
        72·
        7 months ago

        The signal app does not let me send messages to WhatsApp users.

          • delirious_owl
            2·
            7 months ago

            The web app version requires you to install the nonfree app. This is circular logic.

              • delirious_owl
                2·
                7 months ago

                Yeah and not just once. Iirc if their proprietary, closed-source app doesnt call home to their mother ship at least every 2 weeks, then all your WhatsApp Web sessions get deauth’d.

                We really need a way to use WhatsApp without using the original spyware app.

                • GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml
                  2·
                  7 months ago

                  Well even if someone creates it, it will still act like a web session. It will just be a frontend. You can’t create a separate app with authentication and everything because it’s proprietary (so you can’t see how authentication works) and messages are E2EE

      • delirious_owl
        5·
        7 months ago

        No, I’m not looking for an alternative. I’m looking for an open source client that let’s me talk to folks on WhatsApp.

        • Vik@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          7 months ago

          I see, fair enough. I don’t know if you’ll have any luck with a FOSS third party client which does t violate their TOS. There was something on fdroid years ago, a wrapper that effectively allowed you to use WhatsApp Web on another phone (or perhaps even the same one), but it ultimately requried the use of the official clients

          • delirious_owl
            1·
            7 months ago

            If you use one of those WhatsApp web apps, you still have to use the closed source app. It doesn’t solve the problem

            • Vik@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              7 months ago

              Yes, I already aluded to this. Point being, I don’t think you’ll find a viable FOSS front end since it would violate their TOS.

              • delirious_owl
                1·
                7 months ago

                Most people don’t care about violating ToS. Its not a risk to an open source project.

                • Vik@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  7 months ago

                  It is to

                  A: the continuity of said project (DMCA) and B: to the individual end users.

                  You can use FOSS clients for things like Discord or the Google play store but you still run the risk of getting banned.

                  • delirious_owl
                    1·
                    7 months ago

                    Shit, I get banned by their shitty ML algos when I do comply with their ToS. I don’t think most people care about the risk of having to create new accounts, since they’re already forced to do so already.

    • bazmatazable@reddthat.com
      4·
      7 months ago

      This and so many others that are irreplaceable because of the Network effect. Google Maps, Uber and so on…

      However if you are looking for a self contained app to bring into the Foss ecosystem then I would recommend making a game that you like?

      My first game that I bought on Google Play was Osmos making a version of this that is open source would make me happy…

    • abominable_panda@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      7 months ago

      Edit: someones already mentioned these below… nevermind!

      If youre in the EU then EU parliament forced whatsapp to start developing cross-app communications with Signal, telegram etc. (Source). This was in 2022 and was due to be released in March 2024. Im not sure where it got to though since i dont use whatsapp, though i might start asking some friends to see if its rolled out.

      Alternatively there are “matrix bridges”. Namely via Matrix which can link messaging apps through matrix accounts and send messages between