[tor-dev] Tor for iOS via official channels

[Fabio Pietrosanti (naif)]

On 3/18/12 3:17 PM, Nathan Freitas wrote:
> Afaik, there are no long running background processes available to run a
> standalone tor process. Covert Browser works because it is integrated in
> one app/process.

That's also another nice option, that generally would mean more hacking
on Tor to make it suitable/usable as a sort of "library" to let third
party application provider bundle it within their application.

If it would be possible for third party application developer to add
"anonymity" support to their application just by linking trough an
"anonymity library" and taking care of using "anonymous sockets", we
would see a lot of applications adding "anonymity" feature.

> Maybe the VPN service model would work though.
> 
> Otherwise, I agree something should be done, even if it is only an
> open-source version of Covert Browser. At Guardian Project, we have
> plenty of iOS experience but we just loath having to pay Apple $99 a
> year to have the privilege of developing with their closed source IDE
> only on MacOS.
> 
> One should also look at why VLC is not in the app store - there was a
> conflict with GPL I believe.

Yeah, but Cover Browser can use Tor because Tor is BSD-licensed, so as
long as we keep stuff in a BSD-licensed schema everything could work.

As a local PPTP server maybe it's possible to use directly the
BSD-licensed apple support
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/135631?start=0&tstart=0 ?


However between the VPN hack approach and the "tor as a usable library"
approach i think it would be much better the second one.

So working on Tor to make it suitable for use by third party application.

-naif