RetroMessenger - Just talk with your friends: This Instant Messenger is open source, secure and serverless.
- You need an open source application to keep in touch with your friends? RetroMessenger is a easy to use and simple Instant Messenger to keep all your friends listed in a friendlist and to message them.
- You want to secure chat based on PGP-keys? All messages to your friends are secure and encrypted, so no third party is listening. You just need to swap with your friend a PGP-Key and you are done. RetroMessenger is encrypted out of the box, that means no difficult installation or extra-downloads for the encryption part is needed.
- You do not want to send your chats over a server or a registered central server account? RetroMessenger does not need a central server. So the network never will be down or monitored by one central authority sending you adds or "weather notices". With RetroMessenger you are not on anyones "needle", you are only connected to your community.
- You want to use a messenger designed for a linux/win mobile phone? More and more you have Instant Messaging on you mobile phone, especially windows or open source linux phones like the openmoko or maemo. RetroMessenger is designed with a small tiny gui to fit these needs on mobile phones.
- You are IT-admin in a company wanting to use a simple server & maintenance free instant messaging solution? RetroMessenger is an easy to admin tool. So as well small/medium companies choose this messenger for the employees to have an real time communication tool without the need to admin or maintain a server.
- You are wxwidgets developer and think this toolkit should be used on the worldwide first open source serverless wxwidgets messenger? RetroMessenger uses in the first goal a wxwidget gui, as this is cross platform and offers a well design.
- You are a XUL-Firefox`/Thunderbird Addon Developer and want the serverles secure Messenger as well in the Browser? The sucess of RetroMessenger shows, that already as well in the team there are specialists for a XUL gui as well, to bring in the RetroMessenger in Firefox or Thunderbird as an XPI-Addon.
- You want to share URL-Links with your friends? Like services like digg or MrWong you can share with your friends Urls and Links in the exciting Messenger Feature: Link Cloud. All Links you enter are shared with your friends - and you and them can even rate them.
- You want to be part as a user of the RetroMessenger-Community and have questions or ideas? We are a small developer community but very active in helping each other in compiling and getting the messenger running. Ideas, help or questions are always welcome and therefore we have a not-public malinglist, you can join, if you adress to us.
So.. you see.. your are well done with the Instant Messaging Experience with RetroMessenger, the open source, secure and serverless Instant Chat Messenger.
Why is it called RetroMessenger? 7th of July 2008 the developer team of the RetroMessenger project (http://retromessenger.sf.net) decided to build an open source Instant Messenger with the wxwidgets toolkit, as there is no (serverless) open source messenger build with it and decided together to use the name: RetroMessenger.
This has three reasons: First, they wanted to make communication with friends as simple as possible as before the internet even was existing or thought. The slogan "Just talk with your friends" was born and the strong believe, that communication today needs to be done like in real life years ago - before each sentence of personal communication is written and logged electronically over servers like today. So there is the vision to need the old, human and natural style back: Retro. The usage of RetroMessenger was always thought as communication over an easy and simple application. 
Second, the "natural way" to "just talk" over RetroMessenger with your friends like years ago before the electronical ages means to be able to whisper as well in the internet, so that third party is not able to listen. That is why the RetroMessenger is establishing only secure connections to your friends using PGP-Keys out of the box. Retro, just like years ago, you can talk secure with your friends, business partners and family.
Third, RetroMessenger is built on the open source library "libretroshare". To be open source is an fundamental element of our community and that is honoured within the name to that open, secure and serverless library "libretroshare"
So in sum: Our vision is to have a lot of users appreciating the open source, everywhere usable Instant Messenger to be able to just to talk with the friends like years ago before the electronical ages: secure, serverless, open and free.
You want to come back with us to the old good age of secure and free communication? Then download and login!
Only a few weeks later, the XUL development of RetroMessenger begun. The design of the wxwidget RetroMessenger started to be ported to a FireFox-Addon with the XUL-Gui-Toolkit. So you can have it both, as a standalone Messenger with wxwidgets or, RetroMessenger as a chat messenger in the browser Firefox.
The XPI-Firefox-Release will be reported later (currently in the SVN),
Third: Now we have a Qt Gui development team as well. The thirf gui toolkit you can choose, if you want to implement into your application an instant messenger. We are still looking for MFC and GTK gui designers.
Back to wxwidgets gui - our main development goal:
Technically RetroMessenger has two main components: The core libretroshare (C++) and the wxWidgets toolkit for the graphical user interface (GUI).
It is serverless, as it uses a DHT to find the actual IP adress of the friend.
Because of its compact interface it is usable as well on mobile phones like the OpenMoko Phone or on any Netbook laptop like the OLPC or eeePC . And as well enterprises often do not have an instant messenger, do not want to set up a server for that and get with RetroMessenger an opensource, secure and payment-free alternative - maintenance free and without the need to set up a server.
As well the later releases of RetroMessenger could be discussed for the messenger-part of the OpenOffice Suite:
You find the SVG to edit as well in SVN.
This project searches for more developers (cpp/h) supporting the wxWidgets gui, as we have still not a productive release out. If you want to guide us from alpha over beta to a release for the communirty, just write the the project admins.
There is a public forum at the project page, where each post sends a notifier to all project members - and if you like to join the development team, there is even a (hidden from the public) mailinglist archive. If you want to reach (moderated) the list, write to: retromessenger-team [[at]] lists [[dot]] sourceforge [[dot]] net
It does not matter if you are an experienced coder or a young student interested in making a difference in the communication over the internet - you are welcome to join the team and there are many tasks in where you can be part of that great and needed Retro-Movement towards the future. How about just starting to test the given code/&application, to run your first instance of the Messenger and to help to test it, to ask friends to be part of the community - your friendslist - and to continually improve the RetroMessenger experience?!
The screenshots show the generate certificate, login, friendlist and chat pages and as well "Link Cloud", a cool feature to insert http-links or Hash-URLs to send them directly to your friends. So it is like in any social network, where people share the coolest news and newest places to browse. There is a "Rate"-Button, each URL can be rated from +2 / +1 / 0 / -1 / -2 and as well commented why.
If you press the "rate" or/and "send" (forward)-Button, then the one selected URL is sent to your friends. So be sure to rate the URLs from your friends daily or instant. Of course you can insert a new URL / Link as well, so your friends can rate it.
The main chat frame has as a service in the bottom a "Find"-Button and keyword bar, which opens the default browser to search in a search engine for that keyword.
RetroMessenger compiles as well on Mobile Internet Phone Maemo and Nokia N 900:
Maemo is the linux open source plattform for mobile devices, which is not tracking users. Open source phones and mobiles need an open source messenger:
Download and test, get in touch with the community and join the development:
So as a user go to the download tab and try to install the actual version. Be sure any installer you find is currently in alpha/beta stadium. Or as an experienced user see the SVN for detailed status of development and get in touch with the development-team for your ideas and questions.
So you might want to ask, where to start how to support the development:
1. Try to check out the code from the SVN Version Control of the current codings. There are at sf.net in the help section details explanations how to use and deal with SVN. Be sure, the one who can read and is willing to get it done has always an advantage. So it depends on you. But to get you an introduction: Mostly there are SmartSVN and Tortoise used. We have good experiences with SmartSVN and tortoise is more in the shell/explorer integrated and has a good Browser of the SVN, so you can add files individually. To just browse the code-directories you can use the HTML-Interface of Sourceforge as well. In SmartSVN or Tortoise you need then to enter this url: https://retromessenger.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/retromessenger
Ok, try to download the code to your local hard disk. Then read the developers-wiki to get more information, which developertools you need to install, to edit the code.
We have one wx gui and one Qt gui. For WX gui see the Documents in the SVN
To compile Qt-RetroMessenger you just need to download the QT part of our SVN as described.
Install Qt 443 from qt-software.com (new version 4.5 should work as well) and you just need to open the Command Window
COMPILE ON WINDOWS for windows with QT mingw:
goto (with "cd" command)
//QTRS_retromessenger_mingw_SVN1139\retroshare\trunk\retroshare-gui\src
type "qmake -o makefile retroshare.pro"
, enter wait
then type "mingw32-make" (or just "make")
You find retroshare.exe in
//QTRS_retromessenger_mingw_SVN1139\retroshare\trunk\retroshare-gui\src\release
Just doubleclick... or download the already done nightly builds here: Release
Download the secure & serverless RetroMessenger or join the Development Team for wxWidgets Graphical User Interface.