[ANNOUNCE] Bitmessage - P2P Messaging system based partially on Bitcoin

[marcus_of_augustus]

Is there a way to try this on OSX without compiling? Is there a downloadable .dmg file somewhere?

I believe it works on OSX ... you may have to install brew version of python and PyQt first.

[ffcitatos]

Us Fedora/OpenSUSE users don't have a way to compile binaries for ourselves. It would be helpful if there were options for us.

One of the better quotes in this forum so far

[marcus_of_augustus]

Aetheros ... just wondering if there is a use case and a way to add a reputation scoring system easily onto Bitmessage addresses?

Basically, we have the basis for a WOT OTC price discovery mechanism here similar to http://bitcoin-otc.com/, since BM-addresses are 'owned' by the controllers of the private keys to those addresses. Keep in mind we can have broadcast channels for price offer/bid of designated asset-pairs but this is not the only reason reputation of BM-addresses would be useful.

If there was a way users could securely rate specific BM-addresses that would be the beginnings of a WOT for BM-keys. In fact, you could have several different ratings for each address, "Knowledgeable", "Dependable",  "Tradeworthy", etc to cover different use cases for establishing trust with users of BM-addresses.

Let me know what you think ... thanx for the great software btw.

[Atheros]

Aetheros ... just wondering if there is a use case [for] a reputation scoring system [with] Bitmessage addresses?

Only about a thousand possible use cases. I've long thought that an actual working distributed web of trust would be as revolutionary as the Internet: imagine having a complete stranger walk up to you on the street outside your home and say, "Hey man, Can I borrow your keys like right now?" and you hold your phones up next to each other, a light turns green, you check to make sure he matches the picture on your phone, and you hand him the keys.

For Bitmessage alone it means getting rid of the PoW for identities who are sufficiently trusted, eliminating spam entirely, and obviously integration with other systems which depend on feedback and trust of identities.

As far as implementation of the distributed web of trust, I'm not sure how it would work but there does appear to be a lot of research on the topic. We could use someone who can recommend some set of papers to read first since there is so much.

[bitpop]

Any chance for a release to help with Windows connections?

[Atheros]

Any chance for a release to help with Windows connections?

Very soon; the only remaining thing I need to do for the next release is repackage the new icons so that they can be included within the EXE. And also Linux testing.

[bitpop]

Thanks. Wish: make the x minimize not close.

[marcus_of_augustus]

I've long thought that an actual working distributed web of trust would be as revolutionary as the Internet: imagine having a complete stranger walk up to you on the street outside your home and say, "Hey man, Can I borrow your keys like right now?" and you hold your phones up next to each other, a light turns green, you check to make sure he matches the picture on your phone, and you hand him the keys.

Now that would be pretty cool.  ... you've obviously thought this out to some far out there visions.

For Bitmessage alone it means getting rid of the PoW for identities who are sufficiently trusted, eliminating spam entirely, and obviously integration with other systems which depend on feedback and trust of identities.

Yep, real good points.

As far as implementation of the distributed web of trust, I'm not sure how it would work but there does appear to be a lot of research on the topic. We could use someone who can recommend some set of papers to read first since there is so much.

Hmmm, let me see what I can find out.

[bitpop]

How many bits is the cipher? Is it as strong as pgp?

[HostFat]

0.3.1
Added new API commands: getDeterministicAddress, addSubscription, deleteSubscription
TCP Connection timeout for non-fully-established connections now 20 seconds
Don't update the time we last communicated with a node unless the connection is fully established. This will allow us to forget about active but non-Bitmessage nodes which have made it into our knownNodes file.
Prevent incoming connection flooding from crashing singleListener thread. Client will now only accept one connection per remote node IP
Bugfix: Worker thread crashed when doing a POW to send out a v2 pubkey (bug introduced in 0.3.0)
Wrap all sock.shutdown functions in error handlers
Put all 'commit' commands within SQLLocks
Bugfix: If address book label is blank, Bitmessage wouldn't show message (bug introduced in 0.3.0)
Messaging menu item selects the oldest unread message
Standardize on 'Quit' rather than 'Exit'
[OSX] Try to seek homebrew installation of OpenSSL
Prevent multiple instances of the application from running
Show 'Connected' or 'Connection Lost' indicators
Use only 9 half-open connections on Windows but 32 for everyone else
Added appIndicator (a more functional tray icon) and Ubuntu Messaging Menu integration
Changed Debian install directory and run script name based on Github issue #135

[Rassah]

Atheros, what's your donation address for Bitmessage?

[HostFat]

I made a short video describing the core features and functions of Bitmessage. I would like to know if anyone sees incorrect information so that I can fix it before I share the link more broadly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_dTotavJZ8

Thanks,
.dok

[Daily Anarchist]

I've looked for a btc donation address but haven't yet found.

[Daily Anarchist]

Couple of pages ago (#102), I was asking for help with Debian Testing compilation, as Testing is provided with python2.7, but there is no PyQt4.QtCore for python2.7, only for python3.0, which is not supported by Bitmessage.

But on Ubuntu it's working fine, thanks I just compiled binary and installed it without problems.
I will have to look again on my Debian laptop

Unfortunately Debian, Fedoria, (and thus others like Mint Linux) cannot run it as easily because their copies of OpenSSL doesn't include Elliptic Curve cryptographic functions for patent reasons.

Any chance of switching from OpenSSL to GnuTLS? It would solve that problem, which is rather large considering how many of your users are likely on a linux machine.

[TECSHARE]

Bitmessage suddenly wont load after working for weeks. Any ideas?

Are you running the Windows EXE or the source code?

The EXE

[bitpop]

0.3.1 doesn't seem to be starting up.

[Atheros]

0.3.1 doesn't seem to be starting up.

What does it do?

[bitpop]

It works on 7 x64. But not on 2012 x64. In the task manager it seems to be active, it has 2 processes. The GUI doesn't display. I tried deleting the knownnodes and message but still no gui.

[Atheros]

It works on 7 x64. But not on 2012 x64. In the task manager it seems to be active, it has 2 processes. The GUI doesn't display. I tried deleting the knownnodes and message but still no gui.

Time for me to add logging functionality.

[bitpop]

:/
let me quickly retry .3, can i get a link? sanity check.