KDE Brooklyn Chat Bridge Sees Its First Release

[phoronix]

Phoronix: KDE Brooklyn Chat Bridge Sees Its First Release

Brooklyn is a new project within the KDE camp that's being developed this summer via Google Summer of Code...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=KDE-Brooklyn-0.1

[bug77]

And it's going to fail fast because hardly anyone uses open IM protocols these days.

[boxie]

I gave up on multi chat clients years ago (pidgin, adium etc) because, well, chat had moved on... I might be a strange case, but I just use Discord these days - it *just* works

[devius]

I wouldn't say "fail", just not get that much use. But I agree that the demand for new chat clients isn't exactly huge.

[Serafean]

And it's going to fail fast because hardly anyone uses open IM protocols these days.

That, and because it has failed before : XMPP relays.

Seriously though, communication technology is in deep trouble as far as openness goes. Email is harder and harder to keep under control (I know : I set up my personal email server, it was a PITA to jump through all the antispam hoops, and google still marks me! ) -- meaning the price of entry is extremly high for an individual.
XMPP never broke through, although it had the spotlight at one time when both facebook and gtalk supported it.

[uid313]

These days Slack, Gitter and Microsoft Teams are more interesting.

[bug77]

That, and because it has failed before : XMPP relays.

Seriously though, communication technology is in deep trouble as far as openness goes. Email is harder and harder to keep under control (I know : I set up my personal email server, it was a PITA to jump through all the antispam hoops, and google still marks me! ) -- meaning the price of entry is extremly high for an individual.
XMPP never broke through, although it had the spotlight at one time when both facebook and gtalk supported it.

Yeah, I'm not sure how that happened. I mean, with email, it was pretty obvious we needed a standard and everyone stuck with that (well, except Microsoft that saw fit to add a slew of Oulook-only crap, but I digress). Imagine if we didn't do that and instead we had to join yahoo, hotmail, gmail and others individually to be able to send emails to our friends using those servers. It's exactly what happens now for IM. Not only is it impossible to keep up with your contacts using a single messaging up, it's virtually impossible to do it using 2-3 of the more popular ones.

[Serafean]

Yeah, I'm not sure how that happened. I mean, with email, it was pretty obvious we needed a standard and everyone stuck with that (well, except Microsoft that saw fit to add a slew of Oulook-only crap, but I digress). Imagine if we didn't do that and instead we had to join yahoo, hotmail, gmail and others individually to be able to send emails to our friends using those servers.

Now it is mainly a conglomerate of "big" providers. Try setting up your own email server up to the point where outlook, yahoo and gmail accept it as non-spam. In my case, gmail is, as of now, a flip of a coin. Meaning, IMO at random, my emails end up in spam, or not.

It's exactly what happens now for IM. Not only is it impossible to keep up with your contacts using a single messaging up, it's virtually impossible to do it using 2-3 of the more popular ones.

Obligatory xkcd : https://xkcd.com/1810/
I can tell you how it happened : In the beginning of the public internet, ISPs tried to lock you in with portals. That failed.
Today, those portals are back in the form of google/facebook, and, today, nobody is fighting them.
Corporate lock-in, that's what happened.
IM is still kind of an outsider, IMO because of people looking for privacy in a messaging product.
10 years ago, it was mostly about protocol, now it is about platform.

These days Slack, Gitter and Microsoft Teams are more interesting.

No they're not, not open...
What is wrong with IRC? I am forced to use slack, and see no added value over IRC.

[Ananace]

Personally, I've been moving more and more over to the Matrix IM protocol. It's akin to XMPP in it's core design, though it's completely federated from the get-go and it's based entirely on web technologies so it doesn't require any native components to run.
Their current spec is entirely XHR long poll based as well, so not even WebSockets are required for it to work. (Though there is a WebSocket RFC up for it)

The only IM protocol I use that's not bridged to Matrix as of this moment is actually Discord - though they have a GSoC project up to solve that particular problem.

[ssokolow]

Now it is mainly a conglomerate of "big" providers. Try setting up your own email server up to the point where outlook, yahoo and gmail accept it as non-spam. In my case, gmail is, as of now, a flip of a coin. Meaning, IMO at random, my emails end up in spam, or not.

If I can ever find the time, I want to use a specialized milter to automate my "use e-mail aliases as revokable keys" system by rewriting incoming and outgoing To/From addresses. (And a browser plugin to make it easy to generate and paste new keys)

Given the state of e-mail, though, I'll probably just use GMail SMTP for outbound and map the token into the Reply-To instead. After all, it's not as if I'm trying to hide who I am... I just want a more deterministic alternative to a bayesian spam filter and to make sure that, when they click "Reply", their client automatically uses the whitelist auth token assigned to them.