[kwlug-disc] Cross Platform Messaging Clients

[Andrew Kohlsmith (mailing lists account)]

> Pidgin and the like have always been a bit of an unstable mess with
> all the constantly changing, underlying protocols that they need to
> support (that said, I do still use Bitlbee for XMPP, Twitter, and
> Facebook).

There is an important distinction here I think that needs to be made.

Pidgin has been a bit of an unstable mess because the underlying protocols it’s trying to unify are obfuscated, undocumented and change without warning.

XMPP has always worked. IRC has always worked.

Google Hangouts stopped federating for a while, but now they seem to be federating again. No official word on changing their stance, but maybe a glimmer of hope.

All this walled-garden “gotta try to trap the users in our specific app” is terribly frustrating and reminds me of the old MSN/ICQ/Y! messaging wars.

-A.