Nice overview.
I only wish for there to be an implementation of the signal protocol that fits my needs. In WhatsApp and Allo there are concerns of ad companies using your metadata, and the Signal app is lackluster in the UX department and OWS's affinity with Google is rather disappointing also.
Wire seems fairly fully featured, open source, and claim to have a feasible "freemium" business model, i.e. later selling premium services on the platform.
They claim they use the Axolotl double ratchet, though Moxie/OWS claims Wire uses a variation of the protocol they don't recommend.
If you're interested about this topic, I recommend the following readings previously posted on HN and drawing your own conclusions. They are listed in no particular order: [1][2][3][4]
> I only wish for there to be an implementation of the signal protocol that fits my needs.
...and which most of my friends used.
I'm OK with Signal's UX, but the problem is that I know exactly two people who use it too, everyone else is on WhatsApp. I mean: Writing this implementation would be hard, but still tremendously easier than getting enough traction to make it useful.
People can change fairly quickly to a new platform and it doesn't have to be all or nothing. I stopped using WhatsApp and have convinced most of my friends to install Signal for communicating with me in place of SMS.
However it's hard to recommend because of the lack of features.
It's beta currently, but we're trying to fill this gap in matrix.org with the Olm & Megolm ratchets as showcased in the web version of http://riot.im. Once it's implemented on mobile too (around the end of October) it will hopefully be a compelling option!
