Are any "Toxers" here around? I used this tool, which is designed to be an private and secure alternative to Skype, for quite long time. The point is that I stopped using it. Because I read about the reality about the Tox Foundation's donations and what happened to them (among other things).
Despite this issue on handling with donation money, there is also the point, that Tox isn't ready at all (I know it's in alpha stage but it's also already heavily promoted). However, I really love the variety of clients available and the structure (the separate core as an example) of creating such a tool, but as it seems the vast majority of lead developers left - the result is a tool with great idea, slow development (because of lacking on strong and continuous devs), a library of bugs and no security audit (for which the donations were originally raised). I don't want to just criticize but as it seems Tox and its foundation has some big problems that needs to be solved before I settle for another go with Tox.
As a dev (with quite some experience and understanding of the fields used by Tox) I seriously wanted to help the project, designed a "new Tox design" which probably solved all the ToxID issues but I eventually turned back and did not publish it (maybe also because of this facts and the other problems in/of the Tox Foundation). Maybe I'll go for my own tool; maybe a fork with fresh ideas and features in my mind, maybe from scratch, maybe not at all.
Yup, as it seems Tox is toxic. And it's toxicity is apparently killing Tox itself.
Tox sounds more and more like a joke to serious people who that look over it.
The "main discussion" - now evolved into some kind of drama - is going on here @ #Github and there is also a thread on reddit (not that I make advertisement for it).
UPDATE: As the "discussion" turned into shitposting and is so seen dead, also Tox is pretty much now.
I've been following the development of the Tox project since it first started on 4chan's /g/, and I've been sceptical of it from the very beginning.
The first issue was that there was no need to reinvent the wheel. Retroshare exists, it's a mature project, it does videochat already among other things, so why not contribute to it or fork it? Jitsi and Pidgin are other alternatives to Skype that do everything Tox does and more.
Then there was the fact that the Tox team started hyping it long before they had something resembling a working program, another red flag right there.
Then there were serious doubts about the ability of the developers to implement encryption correctly. Then there was developer drama. Meanwhile, development was slow, very slow.
It's just been one misstep after another for Tox. The other day I was checking 8ch's /tech/ catalog and there was this story about the "mismanagement" of the foundation's funds. Some guy took out $3k to pay for his college tuition fees or something, and didn't even bother telling the others until he was pressured into doing so. Hilarious!
Tox is a great example of how not to run an open source project. Everyone who has yet to abandon this sinking ship should do so already.