[Ring] Q/A party

[Guillaume Roguez]

Hi Ring community,

We're going to take a bit of time to answer to some of your questions:

---

Q: Found the Logo different to your Website/my GNOME Ring App/Android Apps here:
https://www.microsoft.com/de-de/store/p/gnu-ring/9nblggh43d70?rtc=1#

A: We try to respect the flat icon design in accordance with current Windows 
design.

---

Q: How to conctat the Ring team in private?

A: Please do not, if it's not a high security issue report or business contact.
Or any answer will be really delayed!
We cannot provide a per-request support yet, due to the size of the team and 
the work to do.
If you're in the given cases it's ring .AT. savoirfairelinux @DOT@ com.

---

Q: What about experts looking at GNU Ring's code?
Q: Has Ring been audited for security?

A: Currently we get a small review by the GNU project team, when Ring has been 
apply
as a member of the GNU project.
We don't have receive a deep review by a security team yet (anyone to provide 
help?).

---

Q: How do we know if [bug reports] are being actioned?

A: When a ticket is solved, tested and integrated, its status becomes "Done" or 
"Declined".
Before that, other status are used and developers may use the attached comments 
system
to have a conversation on the ticket subjet.
Sometime it may happen we solve a problem without seeing that a ticket was 
dedicated
to it or a patch may cross many tickets (could also be a "side-effect").
In such case it could may take more time to see (by tests) that the problem is
solved. In such case, it may fall into "Declined" with "Not reproductible" flag.
In general, when the state is "New", the ticket is not actioned at all.

---

Q: Is Ring need Internet to work? How can I make my private network?

A: As we don't need a central server for Ring accounts, Ring only requests to 
have an "Ethernet" network.
It could be on Wifi, wire, whatever... as the system provides an UDP/IP 
ethernet network, is enough.
The account settings in dring.yml files (located into user file storage, like 
"$HOME/.config/ring on GNU system)
has the field "hostname" to be filled with the IP/hostname of another peer of 
your network.
If you use a UI client, the same field is available into your account setting 
page.
But... notice that OpenDHT (our DHT technology) is a "viral" network: as nodes 
share their neightbors, if any
of them is not "inside" you network you're going to talk with it, without 
notification!
Take care of that.
OpenDHT has a feature to mark a packet to a specific "network-id": a node 
receiving a packet not equal to
its network-id shall drop the packet at reception.
Ring uses the network-id 0 and it's hard-wired into the code.

---

Q: F-Droid package is very old and seems to be unusable!

A: Yes it is, and it should not be used as there was a compatibility broke 
since the 1.0 version.
We work to find why the Android client doesn't build on F-Droid build-system.

---

Q: How the name registration works? Do you have specifications on name 
registration service?

A: Yes, we've written this Wiki page on this subject:

https://tuleap.ring.cx/plugins/mediawiki/wiki/ring/index.php/Name_server_protocol

---

Q: Is both text messages and calls encrypted by default in all your apps, Or do 
I need to turn it on somewhere?
Q: Is the encryption end to end? Or what type of encryption are you using?

A: We need to answer "no" to the question "Is calls encrypted by default in all 
your apps".
This is due to the presence of the SIP account type, not secure by default, even
if it can be secure if TLS connection is supported by your VoIP provider and if 
you enable
such connection into the account preferences.

But (again) the Ring account type is secure by default and the security cannot 
be "disabled".
So it's always "secure by design".

For security aspects of Ring accounts are detailed here:
https://tuleap.ring.cx/plugins/mediawiki/wiki/ring/index.php/Technical_Overview

---

The Ring team.