The post had nothing to do with perceived competition; I also don't consider you competitive. I wrote what I wrote because it seems highly irresponsible to market something as "secure and private" when it is impossible to audit the source—we're in the post-Snowden era here, are we not? I don't mean to pick on you guys in particular, you seem like a nice, well-intentioned bunch. But if you truly care about privacy and security, then I don't see how you can disagree with my premise. The old way of doing things has had its day.

"Any person can invent a security system so clever that she or he can't think of how to break it." —Bruce Schneier

Anyway it's your company and you are of course free to do as you like, but I will continue to encourage you to re-think this strategy, and likewise discourage anyone I know from using Gliph until a different direction is taken.

PS- Can you explain to me why "startup" and "open source" are at odds? I don't really follow.

It is antics like this that should make us think twice about trusting proprietary, closed-source software. It demonstrates the inherent value of free and open source code: Backdoors and hidden activities such as this don't have a chance. They will be discovered and removed. With proprietary software you can never know what you get. This is not just limited to software that hails from a heavily monitored society. Even in the west, the most reputable software vendors have had moments where the mere opportunity to capture more data than they really needed about you was just too tempting to pass.

Free and open source is the answer to a world written in code. Our data, our thoughts, our privacy should be worth enough to us that we want to protect them. We have seen here again that you cannot do that with proprietary software.