[kwlug-disc] Cross Platform Messaging Clients

[Andrew Kohlsmith (mailing lists account)]

> On May 13, 2016, at 10:56 AM, Jason Locklin <locklin.jason at gmail.com> wrote:
> True, but it's never been terribly good at IRC. Dedicated IRC and XMPP
> clients have generally been quicker to implement new features and
> support old ones consistently. It's a big load trying to support many
> protocols *and* keeping the UI functioning well.

When’s the last time IRC had a feature added?

I mean I still IRC with a shell, screen and irssi. I can’t stand GUI IRC clients (including Pidgin), but I don’t think this is a great argument against unifying applications. The XMPP extensions are a little wild and wooly and even the *server* support of a lot of them is unstable, but I think that’s part and parcel with OSS design. The interesting itches get scratched and a lot of the mundane but necessary stuff tends to languish.

This problem is a good example of why we need a singular strong protocol specification for unified communications, and I think XMPP is by far the best positioned for this. Text, voice, video, federation, encryption, multi-user chat, unicode, file transfer… it’s all there, although admittedly in various stages of completeness. It takes money and other resources to shore up the weak points and bring everything together, and Apple and Google (the two biggest walled gardens) both want to keep their gardens separate.

-A.