Video: Should I Open Source My App

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I have the privacy focus social media app that's similar to whatsapp and telegram that have spent around six years programming it's called Brax me although I'm the beacon of privacy on

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the Internet people continue to say I don't trust your app get the apps that many of you trusts like whatsapp telegram and even signal which are similar - Brax me do untrustworthy

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things so I thought about open sourcing this app and see how that impacts me personally and you the community let me explain my thought process and my final decision

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stay tuned I've built this fairly elaborate app it's called Brax me originally this was intended to be just a simple thing for doing encrypted

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messaging and I started working on it in 2013 but over the years it has evolved I think it has a unique place in the world because of its focus on privacy and not just encryption which of course it has a

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lot of I'm just an individual with no marketing money so basically the app has just been promoted by word-of-mouth and my social media presence and honestly today I run the APIs a community service

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and not as a money maker but it's been around for four years and it has a worldwide community on it already and the people on it are focused on privacy when the idea of Linux phones came out I

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realized that there are limited solutions available to this community for doing safe social media and messaging and this same community believes in the same things I do

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privacy however I always get this question of trust even though I've done even live streams showing the innards of the app and the encryption the problem of doing open-source affects me directly

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through my income stream going open-source stops me from generating an income from licensing the software which I've done over the years to the enterprise market so this is no small

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matter to me but on the other and I thought that perhaps many of you will appreciate what this will do for the community if this app is an open-source project perhaps people will contribute towards

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making the project even better and it should eliminate the trust question since it bears the truth for everyone to see good or bad but what's so different from this app compared to others like

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telegram and whatsapp ah there are huge differences one is starting with sign up Brax me is truly focused on pseudo anonymity in social media it doesn't require a phone number as your login

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like whatsapp telegram and signal it doesn't allow uploading of contact lists those two items alone break my privacy in a big way whatsapp telegram in signal

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all use phone numbers for identification phone numbers are not private by any means any government or even a telecom carrier can identify who is assigned a phone number and match it to their

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device the other problem is the promotion of contact lists which was used initially to make apps viral if you put your phone number in and it is recognized based on someone's uploaded

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contact lists then the made of data already points to your real name and it's an immediate relationship map a contact list reveals so much information about you and your circle and you don't

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have control over it since other people will upload your name and phone number without your knowledge you may think that your communications are secure but simply knowing who you're talking to in

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a time pattern of communication is sufficient metadata to guess connection and even what you're talking about this alone is a breach of privacy I signed up

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to telegram to try it out it asks for your phone number and doesn't really give you a choice I didn't use it so I just left the app bond and hours later I get a message and it was from my brother

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and he says it's nice to see you in telegram this is sucked up people is that privacy for you he found me automatically because I got flagged as be

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president in his contact list obviously he had my phone number then many of you trust whatsapp which fingerprints your device and knows your phone number and matches that to your Facebook account

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and your Instagram account it can then match associations not only inside whatsapp but throughout all of Facebook properties which are those three and yet

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I can't believe this is an app that people trust even though a whatsapp is not open source be Facebook clearly states in their end user License

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Agreement that the metadata is captured across platforms and see it is owned by the biggest invader of privacy in the world zach himself and what's the point of

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secure messaging a certain info like a browser fingerprint and IP address tracking it's part of the activity Brax me tracks neither what about encryption Braxley is a little bit different

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because it used its symmetric encryption throughout and this includes end-to-end encryption my philosophy there was my worry about quantum computers and how they can be used to break asymmetric

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encryption which is the basis of private public keys asymmetric encryption which is used as the main technology in whatsapp telegram and signal is

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convenient but ultimately it can be breakable by upcoming technology with quantum computing the main difference in how Brax me works is that in essence it

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is mostly social media but the key focus is always pseudo anonymity you assign yourself an identity and there's no way to verify your actual identity you can protect your account with off apps like

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Google Authenticator or of--they file storage and messages are all protected with forward secrecy there's triple encryption happening all the time even a database data is encrypted three times

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so that I don't have to worry about even hackers getting ahold of the database because of this encryption the database is not searchable by content I think what I created here is value for the community many features could have

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been in the app and I took it out because it was not contributing to privacy just for the popularity of the app now ultimately it's a tough decision for me to go open source because it's irreversible but in the end I thought

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that this move might make more people use it so that's a positive thing so starting this past weekend I'm foregoing my licensing income from this product and have released it as

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open source you will find the source code under my name Rob rax Minh on github and may I remind you again that whatsapp is not open source and only the front end is open source on telegram

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this open source release approximate is to full app with back in and databases I will work on getting it listed in various open source app stores and get it visible on far sites and hopefully

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you will share in promoting that there's an iOS and Android version of the front end and the front ends just give it a swipe interface and notifications as well as access to the camera and photos

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it runs great on Linux including a bunt to touch I used web app creator to make a clickable link for it on Ubuntu touch in the meantime go ahead and try the app

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at breakfast at me you can reach me there as at Rob Brax Minh MyLink Rob Brax taught me automatically starts a chat with me and I even have my

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ecommerce store on there and check out my other products there including my Brax Wi-Fi router bytes VPN and security products this is my Christmas present to

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all of you and I hope it gives you value and thank you for watching [Music]