Pidgin 2.12 Instant Messenger Client Released

[Mavman]

All reinventing the wheel.
We have had encrypted chat since 2004 on ANY protocol. [1] Granted the encryption key size might need some revision now.
We do have an extensible IM protocol that supports group chat, federation and other bells and whistles (like enabling collaborative document editing[2]). It's called XMPP. [3] And it enables the user to chose his client of choice. (My #1 criterion for using anything)
For big groupchat we have IRC. Also since almost forever.

Fragmentation like is happening now (and has been happening since forever) is the reason IM will never be a first class citizen anywhere : no interoperability, walled gardens everywhere.
We got lucky with e-mail...

</rant>

[1] https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/index.php#downloads
[2] http://scummos.blogspot.cz/2013/06/g...g-in-kate.html
[3] https://xmpp.org

i never understood why xmpp never really took off. Everytime i learn something more about it i realize its potential and how much of a missing opportunity it is............ I also don't understand why there is not a "IM service" based on it, completely open that everyone is using...

[mulenmar]

Yet you would be amazed at the "absolute" efficiency of browser JVMs... Consider a complete x86 VM run using javascript. [1] Linux loads faster in my browser than GMail.

[1] http://bellard.org/jslinux/

An interesting toy, that. Stripped-down 2.6 kernel, bare-minimum hardware (including a serial port lacking FIFO support), 28MB of memory, and a Busybox environment. Pretty much an Pentium-based router, minus absolutely all of the networking support. I daresay it's probably simpler than Gmail, overall.

I've also seen DOSBOX and DOOM in the browser. I'll stick to native-code programs, thank you; the porting required weeds out the pointless crap and leaves behind generally better-quality code, since more eyes have to look at it during bugtesting.

If you want "write-once, run anywhere", use Python, Java via OpenJDK, or such, don't hijack the Internet hypertext/images viewer for it. (And if you absolutely refuse, at least don't fuck over users of screenreader software in the process. Examples of such failure described here: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/failures.html)

tl;dr: I really don't care if the tool's been optimized to the point of being a sonic screwdriver when the job calls for a saw, thank you.

[trek]

But yes, this proliferation of chat protocols is hilariously bad. Indeed, IRC works real nice and there's no need for anything else. It's open, too. Doesn't have that good encryption, but then there's these people working on it: http://ircv3.net/

with pidgin you can have end-to-end encryption enabled on IRC with OTR, the best privacy tool ever

[Licaon]

Also: https://omemo.top/

[sjukfan]

I use the Facebook plugin that LinAGKar mentioned earlier.
There's also a hangouts plugin that I seem to use https://bitbucket.org/EionRobb/purple-hangouts
SkypeWeb used to work well when I bothered to start it https://github.com/EionRobb/skype4pi...aster/skypeweb

There was/is a whatsapp plugin too but I never bothered to try it https://github.com/davidgfnet/whatsapp-purple
Telegram, don't know if it works https://github.com/majn/telegram-purple

I like pidgin. It's not very exciting and don't change that much, but it works as long as chat providers don't change or block the services. Also, everything in one app. I hate it on my phone when I have to open one app for every chat network.

[Serafean]

Well look at that : https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0387.html
XMPP profiles

[Licaon]

XMPP is still fine, read the essays: https://gultsch.de/

Plenty of servers to choose from: https://gultsch.de/compliance.html

OMEMO is wip for Pidgin and Gajim supports it right now on desktop.

[LinAGKar]

Never, Facebook chat isn't open anymore, and this won't change imo

There is a plugin for it (https://github.com/dequis/purple-facebook/wiki). It will supposedly be included in the next major version, whenever that will be.

[Serafean]

Haven't you heard? Javascript-running browsers are the new JVM/userspace! To hell with graceful-fallback, just make everyone keep up the wasteful hardware treadmill so they can have the dozen tabs of scripts made necessary open at once! Oh, its all running too slowly? Let's specify a subset of JavaScript (asm.js) to compile ahead-of-time (AoT), and when generating that code to send out, do it only on little-endian hardware -- completely leave big-endian hardware/software out to dry, it barely exists anyway.

Yes, I'm a little peeved at the waste and inefficiency.

Yet you would be amazed at the "absolute" efficiency of browser JVMs... Consider a complete x86 VM run using javascript. [1] Linux loads faster in my browser than GMail.

But yes, this proliferation of chat protocols is hilariously bad. Indeed, IRC works real nice and there's no need for anything else. It's open, too. Doesn't have that good encryption, but then there's these people working on it: http://ircv3.net/

At work I'm amazed at how people are discovering Slack as if it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. And are very non-understanding when i say that I've been using such a system for 10 years, for free. And Slack is seriously shitty compared to IRC.
As to the proliferation of protocols : I hate the network effect...

Back on topic indeed : Thanks to anyone even remotely involved in Pidgin. It has been and still is a beacon of light for usable chat applications thanks to its libpurple. And Pidgin itself is pretty good

[1] http://bellard.org/jslinux/

[GreatEmerald]

Yeap. During the heydey, I used Pidgin for Google Talk, Skype, IRC, XFire and MSN. Now I'm just using it for Google Talk (which is half-dead) and Skype (which works better than before), and I promoted IRC to Konversation instead. I'm also using Tox, but it's not been stable enough still, also on mobile, to allow good enough video chat, and not enough people on it still. Also WebRTC got real good in the mean while.

But yes, this proliferation of chat protocols is hilariously bad. Indeed, IRC works real nice and there's no need for anything else. It's open, too. Doesn't have that good encryption, but then there's these people working on it: http://ircv3.net/

And back on topic, good thing Pidgin devs fixed the TLS issue. That was preventing me from using Google Talk lately, but now it works again.