[kwlug-disc] Cross Platform Messaging Clients

[Jason Locklin]

On 13/05/16 10:41 AM, Andrew Kohlsmith (mailing lists account) wrote:
>> 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.

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.