I'd pay even more good money for hosting to not be in Google's data centers.
The TextSecure servers are not hosted in Google's data centers. Google's GCM push messaging framework is used to deliver messages to Android users, but the GCM payloads are fully encrypted.
- You can run your own server
- Your server cannot talk to the 'official' servers
- Federation is somewhat possible, but works on a 'We whitelist your machine' base
It's not XMPP. So people using 'Default' TextSecure and your friends & family on your own TextSecure server would be isolated, as far as I understand.
I'd love to be corrected though, because THAT (not business model/jurisdication) is my reason why I'm not comfortable using/recommending it. No offense to moxie and his team, but for me this is another Threema unless running under my (most likely not competent enough, if we're honest) supervision.
It's a good question. TextSecure is not a business, so we don't really have a business model in the traditional sense. Open Whisper Systems is a collective project made up of volunteers and a growing number of contributors, who are sometimes paid by donations (https://whispersystems.org/blog/bithub/) and grants.
Thus far, we've been able to smoothly fund the server infrastructure through grants and donations as well. I think we'll probably be able to continue that way indefinitely, but if that ever changed for any reason, we would consider charging small amounts for premium or high cost features like extremely large attachments. But in general, Open Whisper Systems is a project rather than a company, and the project's objective is not financial profit. I know that's a difficult thing to explain.
> 2. Doesn't WhisperSystems belong to Twitter? Twitter is a US-company (and also part of the NSA stuff), so why should I use that kind of software?
This is also confusing, but Open Whisper Systems is not Whisper Systems. Open Whisper Systems has no relationship with Twitter at all, and is a different organization that came together to facilitate development of the Whisper Systems software which was released under GPLv3. Twitter has never contributed money or resources to Open Whisper Systems, and is not in control of any of the infrastructure.