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If you want to communicate safely with your people, whoever they are and wherever they are, you might be interested in eZing-infrastructure. All you need is a mailserver or even some mailaccounts and a php-driven webserver.

Quick research on that:

- OpenOffice / LibreOffice (StarOffice) - Firefox (with roots at Netscape) - MySQL - Blender - Joomla (Miro)

So, there are samples for both approaches.

Open source superiority discussions from your local "uber enthusiast echo chamber" should stay exactly there. Here's real world calling.

When it comes to your predictions about no developers signing NDAs... With the perspective for an early influence on a product that WILL go open source, I think it is a bold statement to deny the possibility of a group of people taking such a chance. I am not claiming this is an especially interesting opportunity for hobbyists.

Well. Uhm. We don't know us well. I guess this needs some clarification.

We're a "15 year old startup" and we're very active with serveral open source projects. Our decision to not open source the project at the early stages is a decision that serves certain goals for us and the project.

First of all, we see some interest in the technical foundation of eZing. We admit it, we don't want to see a lot of forks and other people making profits based on our work while our initial investments are not covered. Yes, we're selfish like that.

The second goal is that we want eZing to stay. Forever if possible. When we look at successful open source projects, we noticed that quite some of them have had a proprietary or at least a protected "childhood". If open sourced at the right moment, a development community can take the momentum and relevance of the software and lead it to heights a single company is not able to. There are two things that can go wrong: Open source it too early, before the technology is relevant or open source it too late, when the horse is already dead. The approach we choose is of course not a guarantee, but we believe in this approach.

Regarding the review and transparency: We are not willing to limit disclosure of the source code only to security companies or entities like that. We know that trust is not easily earned. If you allow us to dream, then we would - under NDA, see our first goal - disclose the code on a permanent basis to a group of developers that have earned the trust of the community until we finally release it as open source.

We're thankful for your thoughts on this and we would be glad to further discuss solutions so we get eZing off the ground.

exactly. I don't have a problem with opening the code to ensure the encryption is safe, but that doesn't mean to give everyone access for free.

I assume, that no app will ever reach a lot of people if it's not convenient. That collides often with security aspects. Your Yubi-key-solution might be a good extension for eZing to still use PGP without storing the keys inside the phone, but being convenient enough to chat like you do with Whatsapp, what's a lot more convenient than using a mailclient.

my contact-address is info@ezing.de Thanks for all your feedback. You are absolutely right. The app should be open-source to give everyone the possibility to check every part of the security-relevant codes.

eZing is a messaging app that closes follows concepts of well-known messengers to achieve the same comfortable reading and writing of messages. The transport to be used is E-Mails, using standard IMAP-servers. Messages are locally encrypted and forwarded. Decryption takes place at the recipients device. Necessary keys are generated within the app so the private key never leaves the device while the public key is transmitted to the chat partners.

eZing is a messaging app that closes follows concepts of well-known messengers to achieve the same comfortable reading and writing of messages. The transport to be used is E-Mails, using standard IMAP-servers. Messages are locally encrypted and forwarded. Decryption takes place at the recipients device. Necessary keys are generated within the app so the private key never leaves the device while the public key is transmitted to the chat partners.

Is there any known WhatsApp-Like chat for mobile-phones using PGP/Mail technique? If not, why? Are there limitations for a (near)real-time-chat? If yes, why are they not successful?

What if you can chat from within your app with all characteristics you already know from WhatsApp and your chat-partner just uses his thunderbird with enigmail and you do not have to take care of encryption, but it happens from end-to-end?

ok, that's a point... I will put the original files also into the git-repo so everyone can see what's happening.

How about running a company-internal community for you and your employees just by copying 2 PHP-files onto your webserver. You do not need any database or other components. Use every shared host or one of your local (l)a(m)p-servers. Aktually you just need an php-enabled server. No MySQL, and it does not need to be linux. Maybe you just install it on your working-Windows-machine using XAMPP.

on 1) might be a bug... I check this.

on 2) The real-time-experience is a cool feature, but the most times there a not 2 persons really at the same time editing the same text-position. In EasyPad if two are editing seperate blocks the other one will see the changes as soon as the first one will save.

on 3) good point. didn't think on this...

on 4) thought about it, but sometimes I needed to copy a text-part and did't want to start editing.

on 5) ?? did't catch the point. Would you explain?

It's an easy replacement for overweight etherpad or another cloud-hosted solutions. This is a one-file-tool which you can host on your own server to keep your secret notes with you, but still have the ability to collaborate.

There is no need for VNC or Teamviewer any more if you just want to show someone a website. Copy the bookmark, go to your site, click onto the bookmark. A window opens and the site you are looking at will be rendered. There is a link which you can provide to your customer to see what you see.