Support Delta Chat (i.e. Autocrypt along with "countermitm")

[dumblob]

🗣 Suggestion

Recently I started using Delta Chat and I'm really amazed. It's just a plain MUA but with WhatsApp-like UI along with Autocrypt for everything and so called "verified groups" on top (verified groups prevent the only Autocrypt downside - i.e. man-in-the-middle attacks - by implementing countermitm).

Here I'd like to start discussion about potential support of Delta Chat (basically boiling down to Autocrypt in Cypht and NEXTLEAP countermitm specification) in Cypht.

This means not only reading messages (though this would be the first and probably easiest step), but also composing messages.

There are two types of messages - standard Autocrypt messages and then verified group messages (these use the countermitm extension and require importing e.g. a QR code provided by any existing verified group member prior to joining the group).

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Note, Delta Chat community has some unclear "plans" to provide a web application runnable on a web server (but it has very low priority), so it might make sense to coordinate the efforts here with them. First I'd like to know the opinion of Cypht devs, users and community though.

[marclaporte]

Chat Over IMAP (COI) is an interesting idea, and I have been following its progress. If this had been created 10-15 years before, it would perhaps be a very different World today (with less chat app fragmentation). I am very curious to see where this goes next. https://www.coi-dev.org/

Here is a detailed analysis of why WikiSuite picked Openfire and XMPP: http://wikisuite.org/Why-Openfire

But of course, Cypht is an independent project and this could be an interesting evolution!

Thank you @dumblob for bringing this up.

[Yamakasi]

COI is nice but has a huge amount of overhead in total. There are different and better solutions for it these days which might be able to add in as plugin if you want.

[dumblob]

There are different and better solutions for it these days which might be able to add in as plugin if you want.

Did you mean anything specific?

I'm asking because I carefully reviewed what DeltaChat does (and compared to many other solutions including Matrix, Mastodon, WhatsApp, Facebook, Telegram, Signal, Tox, different open source Jabber/XMPP solutions, Mattermost/Slack, Skype, Microsoft Teams, Jitsi Meet, Bluejeans, Google Chat, and others) and I have to say that DeltaChat was a clear winner for me (and I believe the comparison I did was more objective than subjective).

[marclaporte]

Chat Over IMAP (COI) keeps on evolving.

https://archive.fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/coi/ https://github.com/deltachat/

[marclaporte]

https://webxdc.org/ (web apps shared in a chat) is introduced here: https://delta.chat/en/2022-06-14-webxdcintro

[marclaporte]

Please see this video about Delta Chat interacting with a webmail interface: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LbrGXKZN70

It would be quite interesting if Cypht had a threaded / chat view as suggested by @dumblob : https://github.com/jasonmunro/cypht/issues/10

[marclaporte]

When this is ready, we should promote here: https://support.delta.chat/