Twitter To Open Source Android Security Tech 164
itwbennett writes "Following last month's acquisition of Whisper Systems, Twitter is open sourcing 'some' of the company's Android security products. First up: TextSecure, a text messaging client that encrypts messages. Souce code is on GitHub now. 'Offering the technology to the community so soon after the acquisition could indicate that Twitter made the acquisition primarily for the developer talent,' writes IDG News Service's Nancy Gohring."
This is really good news (Score:5, Interesting)
This makes a lot of sense. Twitter is and has always been a facilitator of open communication, particularly from censoring governments. This is just an extension of that.
I have always kept an eye on Whisper Systems and specifically TextSecure (and WhisperCore) but they never became really "usable". I would (and I think many people) love to be able to securely text message (or via iMessage or Facebook) knowing it's safely encrypted but still highly usable (similar to Pidgin + OTR).
Will they try to use this for corporate evil? Maybe. But at the same token WhisperSystems never had enough power/traction to develop what they really wanted and we (the people) needed.