[HN Gopher] Pidgin - A Universal Chat Client
___________________________________________________________________
Pidgin - A Universal Chat Client
Author : smusamashah
Score : 497 points
Date : 2021-01-22 15:37 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.pidgin.im)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.pidgin.im)
| pedro2 wrote:
| Anyone know what happened to the 3.x branch?
| easterncalculus wrote:
| The developer of Pidgin livestreams on Twitch, if I remember
| correctly.
| chrismarlow9 wrote:
| Nostalgia for meebo. Miss that thing, ahead of it's time.
| refracture wrote:
| I used Meebo a lot, and I'm only just now realizing the
| shutdown was because of Google. They bought out the company to
| assign the staff to Google+. What a waste.
| naushniki wrote:
| My company uses Skype for business(Lync) for internal
| communication. Unfortunately the official software is not
| available for Linux which prevents me from switching to Linux on
| my corporate machine. I know there is a plugin for Pidgin to use
| Lync. I wonder if anybody tried to use it long enough to tell if
| it is good enough. I know that the official Mac client is much
| less stable then the Windows one.
| se6 wrote:
| I am pretty much the only Linux user in my company. Pidgin
| works ok with Lync (need to install pidgin-sipe on Ubuntu).
| Video and audio calls do not work, but text chats,
| sending/receiving files and screen sharing works fine. (I have
| not tried to share my screen though but I see their screens
| fine).
| momothereal wrote:
| Same thing here! Eventually the Lync-XMPP bridge was shutdown
| by IT, so we all switched to Mattermost which is similar to
| Slack.
| Sodman wrote:
| I was in a similar situation about ~4 years ago as one of the
| only devs running linux in an all-windows shop. I used Pidgin
| as a Lync client. It had some downsides, I remember "status"
| notifications were particularly buggy, and screen-sharing/video
| obviously didn't work at all, but for one-on-one text chat it
| was fine! YMMV though as this was a while ago.
| millzlane wrote:
| RIP AIM.
| chenster wrote:
| Pidgin, oh my, whoever used it before would be in their 40+ now.
| upbeatlinux wrote:
| Does Pidgin still store passwords in a plaintext file in your
| user profile?
| Macha wrote:
| This argument has been argued over and over. Either the
| passwords are stored in some form of symmetric encryption to
| which the secret is not required to be entered by the user on
| startup, in which case it's just security theater as
| malware/nosy fellow users can just grab the key too, or they
| make you enter a master key on startup, which most users will
| not enable
|
| The same is ultimately true for browser password managers also.
| Do you know both Chrome and Firefox let you export all your
| passwords as plaintext CSV?
| smt88 wrote:
| Windows and Mac have had solutions to this for years. You can
| encrypt user files using their OS login, so they don't have
| to decrypt every time they start the app.
| Macha wrote:
| What does this gain over just encrypting the drive/backups?
| Anything running on the system has the same access.
|
| If the drive is not encrypted, surely for Windows at least
| it's possible to reverse engineer the encryption secret.
| Maybe on Mac you could do something with T2, but now your
| config is not portable, and still doesn't solve the malware
| on the system case or the "your sibling/visitor/housemate
| whoever has physical access".
| Avery3R wrote:
| In a multi-user system using DPAPI [1] on windows
| protects secrets from other users, even if the disk is
| not encrypted. Secrets are encrypted with the user's
| password.
|
| [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20200830203837/https://d
| ocs.micr...
| [deleted]
| citrusybread wrote:
| what else are they going to do? encrypt the files and store the
| key... somewhere? interact with local keyrings which aren't
| compatible across all platforms?
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Well, interacting with local platform keyrings _would_ be an
| actual improvement over storing them as text files, because
| platform keyrings _can_ actually do something.
| swebs wrote:
| >interact with local keyrings which aren't compatible across
| all platforms?
|
| Yes, that's how git does it.
| marco_craveiro wrote:
| Wow great to see Pidgin still going. libpurple was a fantastic
| idea, and its great to see there is bitlbee integration [1]. Need
| to update my Emacs setup to use this! [2]
|
| [1] https://wiki.bitlbee.org/HowtoPurple [2]
| https://200ok.ch/posts/2019-11-01_irc_and_emacs_all_the_thin...
| dalu wrote:
| First Client to my knowledge that had an otr encryption plugin
| haunter wrote:
| Why do 3 people mentioning in the comments that the main dev is
| streaming on Twitch with link to the channel? Seems suspicious
|
| Like literally nothing to add just
|
| "the main maintainer livestreams his work on pidgin on twitch"
|
| "One of the main developers of pidgin streams on twitch"
|
| Edit: of course I got downvoted when I pointed this out.
| Astroturfing is prevalent on HN as well.
| moistbar wrote:
| Because it's an old project and a lot of people, myself
| included, are surprised to find out the devs are still working
| on it.
| osamagirl69 wrote:
| I have been using pidgin since it was called GAIM, and it is
| quite honestly one of my favorite pieces of software. No anti-
| user features, minimal bloat, no nags, just a full featured
| stable chat client.
| Sodman wrote:
| I used to love using Pidgin to aggregate all of my chat clients
| into one UX. These days with most of the platforms I use running
| on proprietary protocols I'm too worried about getting my
| accounts banned for using questionable clients built by reverse-
| engineering these protocols. I've heard enough Google Account
| horror stories that it doesn't seem worth the risk.
| kop316 wrote:
| While I really like Pidgin, I really wish their developer
| reference for plugins were a bit easier to work with/understand.
|
| The only thing I find is here:
| https://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/CHowTo (Their new website
| https://pidgin.im/development/ has nothing on making plugins)
|
| But it does not explain things like How to create new chats/IMs,
| how to create new buddies, what the Buddy List is (Which I found
| out, the buddy list
| https://docs.pidgin.im/pidgin/2.x.y/blist_8h.html is NOT a list
| of buddies that you have, but is a list of things like all of
| your chats, a list of buddies, and some other things I have yet
| to figure out, and this is needed for libpurple to understand
| what chats you do and don't have).
|
| They explain what their APIs do, but I have been typically
| finding it much easier to look though Matrix's libpurple plugin
| (or some of the more established plugins) to figure out how they
| do things like make a new chat room, add buddies, etc.
|
| Perhaps it is also because I have only been looking through
| others code, but I feel like the APIs are a bit on the limited
| side (Like trying to add two pictures and text in a single chat,
| for example. Do I send two files then make text? do I add one
| picture at a time?).
|
| I hate to say, it makes it really hard to try to
| make/support/extend plugins.
|
| (For those curious, I have been working to add MMS support to
| libpurple: https://source.puri.sm/kop316/purple-mm-sms , so that
| the Pinephone can have MMS support).
| kop316 wrote:
| EDIT: So I stumbled a bit across this too:
|
| https://pidgin.im/development/faq/
|
| I can say first hand that the info in "How can I create a
| conversation with someone?" is flat out incorrect. Look here:
|
| https://github.com/matrix-org/purple-matrix/blob/master/matr...
|
| Before you create a conversation, you need to add it to the
| blist (buddy list, which is NOT a list of contacts, but
| something different). If you don't, pidgin has issues
| displaying the chat!
|
| https://github.com/matrix-org/purple-matrix/blob/master/matr...
|
| BUT, that will immediately SEGFAULT if you don't have functions
| such as:
|
| https://github.com/matrix-org/purple-matrix/blob/master/libm...
|
| https://github.com/matrix-org/purple-matrix/blob/master/libm...
|
| And a couple of others. I only found that because the Chatty
| dev was able to find this.
|
| Even with that, it refuses to remember that you have a chat
| after closing pidgin. How to fix that? Well that is a great
| question....as I simply don't know.
| arbitrage wrote:
| I tried to contribute code to the pidgin project a long time
| ago. I was attempting to flesh out the plugin architecture and
| functionality (yes, including documentation! i was a big nerd
| back then. still am, tbh)
|
| The guy who ran the project back then was an arrogant
| sanctimonious asshole. Everything was a goddamn power play with
| him.
|
| I left that project quickly for greener OSS pastures.
| kop316 wrote:
| That's really sad to hear. I have been working mainly with
| the Chatty devs, and they have been great to work with so
| far.
|
| Maybe the v3 API is better, but tbh the v2 API feels very
| much like it was designed for the AIM/MSN days. Not that
| there's anything wrong with that, it just makes the plugin
| architecture feel very inflexible.
|
| But the Chatty folks seem to be moving away from libpurple
| (for much the same reasons), so I don't know how much more I
| will work with it.
| brightball wrote:
| This is exciting! I thought Pidgin had died off, but with the
| sheer number of chat platforms out there I'd much rather install
| a single Pidgin client to keep up with them.
|
| Can it work effectively with the more closed system clients that
| exist today though?
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Surprising to see both Discord and Slack on the list!
|
| No MS Teams, though.
| thecrumb wrote:
| And what does my company use... MS Teams... what has to be
| the worst program ever. Sigh.
| rijoja wrote:
| Good
| c0wb0yc0d3r wrote:
| The link says there is support for signal, telegram, slack,
| whatsapp, even battle.net!!
| swiley wrote:
| I use finch (the curses version of pidgen) to keep up with
| people on discord from tmux. The only closed platform it
| doesn't seem to work with that I use is imessage.
| slumdev wrote:
| Pidgin is included in the TAILS image. It's a good idea to know
| how to use it.
| ASpaceCowboi wrote:
| WOW throwback!!!
| selfishgene wrote:
| In a nutshell, what reason is left to prefer Pidgin over using a
| more modern protocol like Matrix with the Element client and
| bridging to legacy services as necessary?
|
| All the FAQ for Matrix offers on this point is the ability to
| unify ones identity across services.
|
| Anything else?
| ganafagol wrote:
| Pidgin is a client for many protocols. Matrix being one of
| them.
|
| I suggest you actually click on the link and scroll down to the
| table.
| pmlnr wrote:
| I have a github repo to collect plugins that makes Pidgin a bit
| more up to date on all levels. Pull requests welcome:
|
| https://github.com/petermolnar/awesome-pidgin-plugins
| robofanatic wrote:
| Any Digsby fans here? It was my favorite IM aggregator back in
| the day. You could also plug in twitter and facebook feeds to it
| so there was no need to login to twitter or facebook separately!
| htatche wrote:
| Still going? Wow! I remember it from the MSN Messenger days.
| sneak wrote:
| It would be cool if they had compiled mac binaries available on
| their downloads page. They instead recommend Adium, which hasn't
| had a commit on master in five years.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| It's on homebrew, so you might try that. As a linux dude stuck
| on mac at work it's my go to for installing things.
| brew install pidgin
|
| https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/pidgin
|
| On pidgin, I used to use it and have been considering using it
| again, but right now I lean more towards WeeChat because I like
| having the ability to CLI it off a vps but I guess I could
| proxy my pidgin stuff too which is half of the reason I like
| doing that. (friends don't let friends irc from home,
| especially without cloaks!)
| sneak wrote:
| I don't use Homebrew because it embeds spyware. I think we
| should all probably stop recommending it as a result.
| AdamGibbins wrote:
| Are you talking about the analytics? Which most package
| managers have. You can easily disable it:
| https://docs.brew.sh/Analytics#opting-out
| theltrj wrote:
| Pidgin? What year is it again? Glad to see it still around.
| orliesaurus wrote:
| Oh the memories, this was the literal first app I would install
| back in the ~2010 era
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| I'm glad to see Pidgin still alive and well. I remember ages ago
| moving to it from Trillian, and I don't think there's any other
| software around like it.
| creaturemachine wrote:
| Personally I'm holding out for the resurrection of ICQ.
| _joel wrote:
| Isn't that now an unencrypted network owned by a questionable
| Russian chap?
| daveslash wrote:
| This literally triggered the ICQ _" Uh Oh!"_ sound in my
| memory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhGHerssyk4
| flatiron wrote:
| I will gladly sell my 5 digit ICQ number if it does.
| kowlo wrote:
| I had no idea Pidgin still worked. I see support for WhatsApp and
| Signal, going to check it out now!
| beagle3 wrote:
| You are likely to be banned by WhatsApp even if it works for a
| couple of weeks; they are quite trigger happy if the client is
| suspect (which has happened with the pidgin plugin before)
| pmlnr wrote:
| Not with https://github.com/hoehermann/purple-gowhatsapp It
| connects to whatsapp web, that would be banning people based
| on their browser.
| deeteecee wrote:
| same! im amazed it was still going and adding so many
| integrations.
| nautical wrote:
| Last commit seems to be pretty old (~5 years)
|
| https://github.com/davidgfnet/whatsapp-purple/
| memco wrote:
| Not sure that's the right place to look for up to date code.
| I believe it is self hosted somewhere. The lead developer
| streams on twitch[0]. Last stream was about a day ago.
|
| [0]: https://twitch.tv/rw_grim
| w0m wrote:
| whatsapp existed 5 years ago o.0
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| So? That doesn't mean it doesn't still work. I use it every
| day as my Hangouts[0] client at work[1].
|
| [0] Technically it's a Google Talk client, but it seems to be
| able to communicate fine with Hangouts users for now.
|
| [1] Yes we use Hangouts at work for intradepartmental chat.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| The nice thing about modular, open source software, is that
| instead of using the 5 year old client, you can use the one
| that was last updated two months ago:
|
| https://github.com/hoehermann/purple-gowhatsapp/
| spiffytech wrote:
| The repository list linked from the Pidgin website seems to
| be pretty active: https://keep.imfreedom.org/pidgin/pidgin/
| flatline wrote:
| I used it for years up until about two years ago. The UI is
| from ca. 2000, it is okay for one on one chat and that's about
| it. I honestly like IRC clients much better. The world has been
| taken over by slack and its clones for a reason.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Personally, I prefer an application that supports advanced
| features like opening multiple windows.
| jacob019 wrote:
| We use XMPP in our workplace. We used to use Pidgin years ago but
| at the time it didn't support all the protocol extensions that we
| needed. Now we use Gajim on the desktops and Conversations on
| android.
| agurk wrote:
| This list is potentially out of date. Looking at the bottom of
| the page is the tag:
|
| > Modified 2019-04-17 by Anon
|
| This is nearly two years ago, and checking archive.org for the
| same page (earliest copy is Jan 2020) [0], it seems not to have
| changed since then.
|
| Knowing that protocols do change with time, this probably doesn't
| give a good overview of what is currently working with it.
|
| [0]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200129221838if_/http://www.pid...
| CrankyBear wrote:
| I used to use Pidgin all the time. But, as the years went by, it
| supported fewer and fewer of the IM services and protocols I used
| so I finally bid it adieu.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Actually more and more IM services shut down public APIs as the
| web transitioned into extracting value from user lock-in and
| analytics.
| whydoyoucare wrote:
| Get it on iPhone, and people will use it. Yeah, yeah, license and
| all that are mere excuses, and it doesn't alter the fact :-/
| newdude116 wrote:
| Pidgin is too buggy.
|
| try apt install dino-im
|
| Only thing is missing is a setting that a message produces a
| sound. But otherwise, much better, much more secure.
|
| https://dino.im/
| graftak wrote:
| Holy smokes, this (or Adium, rather) is what I used back in the
| day to chat with my MSN friends in the age of aqua.
|
| https://adium.im
| Kaze404 wrote:
| If you like watching programming streams, you can catch the lead
| developer (iirc) of Pidgin on Twitch!
| https://www.twitch.tv/rw_grim
| mdtrooper wrote:
| There is a trick to using Pidgin in Termux, it is not
| userfriendly but it runs.
|
| $ pkg search finch Sorting... Done Full Text Search... Done
| finch/stable 2.14.1 arm Text-based multi-protocol instant
| messaging client
|
| finch-static/stable 2.14.1 arm Static libraries for finch
|
| $
| mdtrooper wrote:
| Sorry in Android with termux.
| jdlyga wrote:
| Does nobody remember Pidgin? It was one of the first things a lot
| of people installed on their machines 15 years ago along with
| Firefox. We used it as an alternative client to AOL Instant
| Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. It used to be called GAIM.
| Svperstar wrote:
| Years ago I setup a doctors office to use Pidgin with the
| Bonjour protocol for local IMs that wouldn't go over the
| internet. Worked well. Free too.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| Does not everyone still use it?
|
| I and most of my friends do.
|
| They are also responsible for my favorite bug report ever:
| https://bugs.gentoo.org/35890
| dheera wrote:
| Oh damn, Pidgin. I LOVED that app.
|
| 15 years ago I had ONE messaging app that logged me into MSN,
| ICQ, QQ, Zephyr, Gtalk, Yahoo, AIM, Facebook, and Renren.
|
| On that one messaging app I had either written or downloaded
| plugins for:
|
| * End-to-end encryption (receiver needed the plugin as well)
|
| * Automatic two-way human language translation via online
| translation APIs so I could have a conversation with someone
| who didn't share a common language with me
|
| * Automatic two-way conversion between simplified and
| traditional Chinese. (I can read both, but traditional is
| faster for me, so I had it auto-translate all simplified to
| traditional for me, as well as auto-translate all of my
| outgoing traditional to simplified on a per-user basis for
| the receiver's convenience.)
|
| * Ability to create conversation groups across networks, with
| my account serving as a gateway.
|
| * Automatic rendering of in-line LaTeX math equations.
|
| * Controlling of IOT devices, and allowing access to my dorm
| room for guests by having them send me an instant message
| with a certain secret word.
|
| * Cloud-based logs of all of my messages.
|
| * Online gateway that allowed me to access all my message
| logs from anywhere on any device and any OS with a web
| browser.
|
| I feel like we've gone backwards. I now have a dozen
| different closed-protocol, walled-garden messaging apps, some
| of them even actively try to PUNISH you for trying to
| decompile and edit them, translation is not automatic, cloud
| logs only exist on Facebook messenger, E2E encryption is
| skeptically touted and paraded as some new thing even though
| _I personally had real open-source E2E encryption 15 years
| ago on ALL my messengers_ , and everyone is siloed into their
| own apps and there is no way to send messages across
| networks.
|
| Sigh. Tech in 2021 sucks. I honestly felt my messaging was
| way more advanced 15 years ago.
| ayewo wrote:
| Pidgin was an excellent IM tool particularly on Linux
| desktops, but there were numerous times when I'm at someone
| else's computer and a web-based IM client like Meebo came
| in handy.
|
| http://meebo.com/
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Pretty sure meebo was built on top of libpurple, so even
| when you went to someone else's PC, you were still using
| Pidgin!
| onedr0p wrote:
| Of course Google killed it, meebo was great and way ahead
| of it's time back then.
| rbonvall wrote:
| But now we have stickers! And gifs! And audio messages!
| jl6 wrote:
| Oh man, funroll-loops is down :(
| aidenn0 wrote:
| What chat protocol do you use it with?
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| _XMPP_ , _Discord_ , _Skype_ , and _Matrix_.
| sli wrote:
| Using Pidgin for Discord is probably a bad idea unless
| the Pidgin plugin has Discord's blessing. They ban for
| using third-party clients.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Nothing of value would be lost.
| unicornporn wrote:
| Is there E2EE support for Matrix?
|
| Edit: Nope. https://github.com/matrix-org/purple-
| matrix/issues/18
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| Nigh all of the protocols have incomplete support.
|
| I purely use it as a chat client and avoid most of the
| more complicated features, since I don't use them.
| kop316 wrote:
| That's been my experience with developing with libpurple
| unfortunately. The APIs are very inflexible for advanced
| chat features, and theres little documentation for making
| your own plugin.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Yeah, that's why I asked, because if you use only 1 chat
| protocol, a dedicated client is almost always better (now
| that ICQ and AIM are dead). Pidgin really shines if you
| need to aggregate multiple protocols in a single client.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| Indeed, and that is why I use it.
|
| I certainly have no wish to have five different clients
| open, many of which not even scriptable when I can have
| all my contacts in one list.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I stopped using it once ICQ stopped working with it. By that
| time, I only had 1 friend that was still using it, and we
| just switched to Discord anyways.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I would use it if it supported Facebook and whatsapp, because
| those are the services that my contacts are on.
| Pick-A-Hill2019 wrote:
| This line cracked me up -
|
| Not sure I expect much more out of somebody that codes for
| AOL software.
| natas wrote:
| gold
| isaac21259 wrote:
| Speaking of great bug reports here's my favourite: Cat
| sitting on keyboard crashes lightdm
| https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/1463112
| jandrese wrote:
| Most of my friends are on stovepiped chat systems now. It's
| really annoying because chat providers have pretty much
| stopped providing third party APIs anymore so you have
| friends spread across Signal, Telegram, Whatsapp, Tencent,
| WeChat, iMessage, and whichever chat system Google is using
| this month.
|
| I seriously miss the days when all of them would be in the
| same app no matter what service they were connected through.
| grep_name wrote:
| Can this still be sorta-accomplished with ZNC and things
| like bitlbee, at least for the less privacy-focused
| services?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > It's really annoying because chat providers have pretty
| much stopped providing third party APIs
|
| They never provided third party APIs. The work of
| developing a unified messaging client was in getting around
| the ways in which they tried to stop you from interfacing
| with their system, and responding quickly when their
| countermeasures updated.
|
| We haven't seen a change in the behavior of chat providers;
| we've seen developers give up on trying.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| At a certain point some services didn't work anymore, or not
| fully feature full.
|
| So yeah, ditched it
| proverbialbunny wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised that is how they lost the majority
| of their user base. Everyone I know was on it, myself
| included, but once support was hampered around the time the
| AIM protocol died, most people around me left for Telegram
| and Signal.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| I dunno.. I guess I just follow what people use...
|
| IRC
|
| ICQ
|
| MSN
|
| Yahoo messenger for some people in japan
|
| Whatsapp, but noboday was there haha
|
| Whastapp, some people there
|
| FB Messenger
|
| iMessage, but bugs with normals SMS, so disabled it
|
| Google talk.. used by some, but I like to de-google a
| bit.
|
| Back to whatsapp
|
| kakaotalk, line, and wechat for research / gaming
|
| Telegram. don't like it at all
|
| Signal. kind of buggy
|
| So in the end, I'm using whatsapp ads it's still
| ubiquitous here, and it's one of the most secure
| platforms.
| anthony_barker wrote:
| I followed the same path. Also used
|
| Jabber a bit,
|
| AOL Messenger,
|
| Blackberry messenger,
|
| Bloomberg Messenger (bank paid 2k per month for it!),
|
| Skype for messaging,
|
| Keybase (kind of cool but too heavy),
|
| Slack,
|
| and now Element Matrix.
|
| Its one place sometimes I think regulation might be good
| to force standardization (like electricity or phone
| standards).
|
| Oh and when I go to asia I use the ones there - viber,
| line, wechat etc.
| coding123 wrote:
| For me it was
|
| IRC
|
| ICQ
|
| AIM
|
| Trillian
|
| Skype
|
| Slack (just co-workers)
|
| Discord (just co-workers that are friends now)
|
| Must be like over a 30 year period of time.
| clint wrote:
| Everyone I know stopped using AIM over a decade ago and by
| even 5 years ago Google Chat and everything else emptied out
| in favor of iMessage, Whatsapp, Signal etc...
| astura wrote:
| AIM shut down more than three years ago.
| RankingMember wrote:
| Google made it pretty easy to migrate to chat/hangouts,
| too, by adding AIM integration.
| lukeramsden wrote:
| > i do not know which is funnier, that sean actually
| submitted this bug, or that you all are so stereotypically
| gentoo users as to take it seriously.
|
| and then marked as duplicate.
|
| seems like a lot of arguing went on on this bug tracker, very
| amusing to read
| igetspam wrote:
| That was great. Thanks for sharing. The submitted patch and
| the linked dupe are pretty great too.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| I literally haven't used Adium in five years. Whenever Google
| deprecated XMPP from gchat and Apple killed iChat, there went
| my decade plus of daily Adium usage (and Gaim before that).
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > I hope to see this bug make the GWN for an example of what
| an INVALID bug looks like
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| I finally stopped using it when Google Chat[0] went away.
|
| [0] Not that Google Chat, the other one.
| smt88 wrote:
| Google Talk*
|
| There was no product named Google Chat until recently.
| uluyol wrote:
| What about the precursor to Google talk? You know, chat
| integrated into Gmail before it was branded Google Talk.
|
| I thought it was Google Chat.
| Macha wrote:
| It was released as a standalone app in 2006 (after having
| a labs beta period prior) as Google Talk, and integrated
| into Gmail in 2007. While the widget in Gmail (which was
| only removed very recently to replace it with a Meet
| widget!) was labelled Chats, the service itself never
| was.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| I think they're actually referring to Google Hangouts
| Chat
| Macha wrote:
| > chat integrated into Gmail before it was branded Google
| Talk.
|
| Hangouts chat came wayyyy after Google Talk or even its
| integration into gmail (I know, it's hard to keep track
| of the chronology of these Google services, they release
| 2 new ones a year)
| astura wrote:
| Doesn't matter what the official name was, what everyone
| called it was GChat or Google Chat.
| smt88 wrote:
| The official name matters when trying to distinguish
| between Google Talk and Google Chat.
| gertlex wrote:
| I'd argue the official name de facto doesn't matter when
| there's been 5+ names for it in the last decade and
| nobody can keep track of it. Vast majority use it via
| their phones or in-browser GMail, I suspect.
|
| (On topic: I use it with pidgin still though for the one-
| on-one chats with a few people!)
| sbrother wrote:
| Everyone called it GChat, and the ~5 people I still
| communicate with on it still do.
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| Ugh, you're right. I failed. I was used to using the
| slang "GChat" back in the day.
| Liskni_si wrote:
| Still works well through
| https://github.com/EionRobb/purple-hangouts. (I'm only
| using that through bitlbee-purple, not via Pidgin, but that
| should be largely irrelevant.)
| m-p-3 wrote:
| The good old time, when Google used XMPP..
| soulofmischief wrote:
| And Facebook, too. I miss using Pidgin for my facebook
| messages.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| Does it not still do so?
|
| I'm fairly certain that I'm using _Pidgin_ 's _XMPP_
| functionality to communicate with others that are
| receiving their end in _Google Hangouts_.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| It used to do XMPP federation too; they might still be
| exposing XMPP C2S but federation is long gone.
|
| Fun fact: if you were on a non-Google server talking to
| someone on Google Talk and they clicked the button to
| "upgrade" to Hangouts, on your end they would show up as
| perpetually "away" and any messages you sent them would
| be blackholed. Yes, that was as frustrating as it sounds.
| amyjess wrote:
| Yes and no.
|
| - Google used to support XMPP federation, and they pulled
| the plug on that years ago.
|
| - Any new features introduced as part of Hangouts haven't
| been backported to XMPP, and so there may be random
| breakage when XMPP users talk to Hangouts users.
| Gualdrapo wrote:
| Me too, right now using pidgin to communicate with
| coworkers via Hangouts. Tried everything to set it up
| with KDE Telepathy (I know, I know - it's just my
| personal account is still working with it) to no avail.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| I would if there was a mobile app.
| finiteseries wrote:
| Mate, the general population increasingly don't even use
| desktops or laptops for personal usage anymore let alone a
| desktop OS specific IM client from the early 2000s.
| raarts wrote:
| My daughter (who teaches math at HS) asked me to create
| educational videos for her kids who don't know how to work
| a computer. They only know phones.
| superkuh wrote:
| Kids can't use computers.
|
| http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-
| use-co...
| teawrecks wrote:
| "She reevaluated her categorisation of me. Rather than
| being some faceless, keyboard tapping, socially inept,
| sexually inexperienced network monkey, she now saw me as
| a colleague. To people like her, technicians are a
| necessary annoyance. She'd be quite happy to ignore them
| all, joke about them behind their backs and snigger at
| them to their faces, but she knows that when she can't
| display her PowerPoint on the IWB she'll need a
| technician, and so she maintains a facade of politeness
| around them, while inwardly dismissing them as too geeky
| to interact with."
|
| God this is some top tier incel shit.
| ricohboy wrote:
| Have you ever worked in an IT support position? It's
| stunningly common and accurate
| Evidlo wrote:
| I think the guy is married with kids.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| What's up with this modern trend of quoting stuff and
| adding an unrelated but currently in vogue ad-hominem?
| spiritplumber wrote:
| /pol/ is leaking.
| Frost1x wrote:
| Probably, but I'd say it's not far off from reality for
| many behavior and perspective wise. I think it
| unnecessarily transfers the behavior to misogyny (could
| easily be anyone/any sex), but that's the perspective
| many hold for those in tech: a means to an end. The
| addition of sex in the description definitely wasn't
| needed.
| psychoslave wrote:
| That's because so many parents neglectfully don't forbid
| them to use computers.
| unicornporn wrote:
| I re-read that piece just a week ago. It's magnificent
| and now even more true than eight years ago.
|
| Spoke to friend this week, she told me she doesn't have a
| computer. That's increasingly common. People get by with
| their phones.
| sergeykish wrote:
| But smartphone is a computer, personal computer with
| telephony hardware. And Android is Linux with different
| userspace, mainline Linux can boot quite a lot of
| smartphones. Terminology is so wrong.
| feanaro wrote:
| There is a general purpose computer under there but most
| people don't interact with it like that. The fact that it
| can does not mean that it will.
|
| A lot of this has to do with the ecosystem and how a
| device is presented and what the UX is like.
| Manufacturers increasingly want to lock things down and
| hide them away.
|
| I agree that this trend should be fought.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| > There is a general purpose computer under there but
| most people don't interact with it like that.
|
| The same could be said about 90% of laptops and desktops
| purchased for home use. How many people actually use
| "computers" for tasks they couldn't do on a phone or
| tablet if those devices had larger screens and keyboard
| support.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| To me, even a Macbook is hardly a "general purpose
| computer". :p People love those (including devs).
| majormajor wrote:
| That's been true since 1984 (and whenever Windows caught
| up ;) ). The enthusiast/hobbyist sector has long been a
| small minority of the computer buying public.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Windows wasn't really that bad until recently. Sure, it
| didn't go out of its way to give you tools to command
| your computer, but it didn't get in the way either.
|
| The true dumbification of computers started with
| smartphones. iOS and Android are the primary drivers of
| this change, of treating computers as appliances.
| Microsoft unfortunately embraced this trend in recent
| years, they quite openly say Windows is an OS-as-a-
| Service now[0]. Still leaves plenty of control points to
| exploit[1], but it starts getting in the way.
|
| --
|
| [0] -
| https://mastodon.technology/@temporal/105385475519240956
| - I almost spit my tea on my keyboard when I saw this
| popping up the other day.
|
| [1] - That's why I'm using a Windows 2-in-1 instead of an
| Android tablet.
| blck wrote:
| Thank you for linking this. I couldn't remember the link
| but was talking to my partner about this recently now
| that we're almost a year into distance learning with our
| son. She remarked how quickly he's picking up on using
| the computer. (He's using her old Macbook Air.)
|
| I remarked that UI/UX is so simple nowadays that kids
| aren't gonna have the wherewithal to do their own
| troubleshooting for bigger issues and how irreparable a
| lot of devices are now the insides of computers are gonna
| be completely foreign to them.
|
| Gonna bookmark this now.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| It is sad that the original article was written in 2013.
| I would argue that not much has changed (few more Linux
| phones were added to the list, but that does not affect
| the outcome ).
| arprocter wrote:
| As someone who used to do support in UK education that
| hit very close to home
|
| I set up a dedicated youtube-dl box in our office to get
| around the exact visitors-with-PowerPoint-and-YouTube-
| videos thing he mentions
| underlines wrote:
| a completely different story:
|
| when steam engines were replaced with the otto motor and
| cars became available to the general population, people
| were able to repair and understand the engines
| themselves. they had an understanding of mechanical
| principles. a few generations later, and only car nerds
| understand cars.
|
| everyone else has to go to a mechanic to understand why
| their car's engine won't start or why it sounds so
| strange. and those weird mechanics will fix the car for
| them.
|
| nowadays people are mechanically illiterate.
|
| /s
|
| my point is, when a technology becomes convenient enough
| so we don't have to think about it while it fulfills it's
| purpose, then you don't have to understand it to use it.
|
| this creates the need for specialists. is that a bad
| thing? i say no. who defines what should be basic
| knowledge and what not? we don't all need to be a
| mechanic, a chemist, a doctor and an ITC pro.
| ivanhoe wrote:
| > we don't all need to be a mechanic, a chemist, a doctor
| and an ITC pro.
|
| We don't need to, true, but we can... and it can be fun
| too... why choose less, turning into mindless content
| consumers?
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Okay but people who aren't mechanics, but drive, still
| know how to do things like turn the car on, and
| understand that if they turn the steering wheel right,
| the wheels point to the right. They understand that the
| car needs gas, even if they don't really know _why_ it
| needs gas.
|
| People who don't know how to use computers treat them
| like a magic box that may or may not do what they want
| to, if they use the right magical incantation.
| crooked-v wrote:
| > that may or may not do what they want to
|
| Computers inexplicably don't do what you want them to do
| all the time, though. Modern cars, by contrast, are
| incredibly reliable even with extremely insufficient
| maintenance.
| filmgirlcw wrote:
| I think you'd be surprised just how much new car
| owners/drivers do not know about how to work a car. The
| number of people I've seen confused by how to fill a gas
| tank -- let alone what type of gas to use, is massive.
| And it'll only get worse as we move to electric and self-
| driving cars.
|
| And then there is the stuff that is often different car
| to car, like where lights are, how to adjust certain
| settings. Want to pair the Bluetooth in your Mercedes to
| your phone? I consider myself extremely proficient at
| computers and absolutely know how to use one in almost
| any capacity and even I've struggled with its lunacy
| (which is much more a reflection on Mercedes bad in-car
| systems that vary model year to model year and can differ
| based on what options your dealer ordered).
| CivBase wrote:
| I don't think the point of that "Kids can't use
| computers" article is that everyone should be technically
| proficient with computers. Rather, it's an argument
| against the common misconception that kids have a natural
| technical proficiency with computers because they grew up
| with them.
|
| The author makes his point pretty clear here:
|
| > Not really knowing how to use a computer is deemed
| acceptable if you're twenty-five or over. It's something
| that some people are even perversely proud of, but the
| prevailing wisdom is that all under eighteens are
| technical wizards, and this is simply not true.
|
| He then offers some suggestions for how to help kids
| become more technically proficient with computers because
| he thinks it's a useful skill to have.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| > when a technology becomes convenient enough so we don't
| have to think about it while it fulfills it's purpose,
|
| Is a tragically limited view of what computers are.
|
| Programmable computers are fundamentally different from
| steam engines. A steam engine will never be anything
| except a steam engine. Most of the manufactured objects
| we encounter in everyday life are similar: single- (or
| occasionally multi-) purpose goods that do what they were
| designed to do.
|
| A general-purpose computer is not like this. It can be
| made to serve virtually infinite purposes. It can be made
| to do things the manufacturers never imagined anyone
| doing, and things the manufacturers wished it couldn't
| do.[0] Almost nothing else has that kind of raw potential
| for human expression. Perhaps a blank notepad and pen
| might be analogous.
|
| [0] https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html
| Elv13 wrote:
| On the contrary, the analogy is very good. The steam
| engine represents power. Power can be used for a
| limitless number of applications. The steam engine is the
| CPU. You input energy (pressure/electricity) and extract
| work (mechanical/computational).
| michaelgrafl wrote:
| Nope. A computer can only do what the apps installed on
| it let you do, unless you're an IT person.
|
| The things is that you don't need to be an IT person to
| use applications, as it used to be. So fewer people learn
| IT skills just so they can play a game or layout a
| document.
|
| I know very little about cars but drive one daily. I can
| see how other people don't bother learning about
| computers just so they can write up a report for their
| job or order stuff on Amazon.
|
| I like your poetic description of general-purpose
| computers. But I'm wondering why you think less of
| general-purpose machinery.
| fartcannon wrote:
| In one sense, yeah, they're the same: they're both just
| tools.
|
| In another sense, computers are closer to pencils and
| paper - they're the tools you use to design the rest of
| the tools. And that's something special.
| spiritplumber wrote:
| No, it's terrifying.
|
| A computer is something you can use to consume content or
| produce content.
|
| A tablet is something you can only really use to consume
| content. (Regular tablet, not artist tablet obviously,
| and those generally have to talk to a computer)
| vlunkr wrote:
| I'm not sure what's terrifying about that. Books can only
| be used to consume content too.
| yoz-y wrote:
| Your own remark about tablets undermine your argument
| though. iPads and MS Surfaces have been arguably the best
| 'artist tablets' and they don't need to be hooked up to
| another computer.
| vlunkr wrote:
| I'm not sure I share the concern. They really expect
| people to understand or care about things like proxy
| settings? Everyone doesn't share these interests.
|
| Yeah kids can't use computers, because they don't come
| with knowledge pre-installed, but the ones who are
| interested will figure it out. It's not like there's a
| shortage of resources. And if you're concerned about your
| own kids, then teach them and they'll have a nice
| advantage in school.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| They use one at home to browse the internet and work?
|
| I can certainly understand that one would do so on the
| go, but it seems extremely cumbersome to do a school
| assignment on a phone keyboard.
| peruvian wrote:
| Not many are writing papers on their iPhone, but many do
| on iPads. Mouse and keyboard support are good and so are
| the apps.
|
| I think the average person that doesn't need to do heavy
| editing, coding, etc. can get by with an iPad Pro w/ some
| accessories.
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| Many use i pads with keyboard cases or chrome books
| instead. These allow typing with a physical keyboard but
| a set of capabilities and an interface akin to that of a
| cellular phone.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| I would suggest they never knew how to use computers.
| Computers are general purpose devices, which is lost on the
| general population who only ever need to check emails and
| post on social media. Smart phones fit this perfectly.
|
| Let's leave the general computing devices for people who
| actually need that power, just like the early days.
| srockets wrote:
| Poe's law?
| octorian wrote:
| > Let's leave the general computing devices for people
| who actually need that power, just like the early days.
|
| With that attitude, eventually the impact of economies of
| scale will end up denying us the ability to afford those
| devices or to use them how we see fit.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| We as a family were able to afford an ARM computer (BBC
| micro) in the 80s.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| That was on the rising edge of the wave of "computers are
| awesome and will change everyone's life". We're on the
| falling edge now.
|
| The problem GP refers to is this: making computers is
| expensive, gets cheaper with economies of scale. But
| economies of scale are capital-intensive, so they exist
| only where there's a market for it. The market for people
| _requiring_ general-purpose computation is small and
| getting smaller, while the market for constrained
| computing is only ever bigger. Which means at some point
| the capital-wielding companies will just leave the
| market, and the prices of new general-purpose computers
| will go way, way up.
|
| On top of that, computers today gain most of their value
| interacting with other computers. Once the mainstream
| usage - like your e-mail or your bank - gets neatly
| packaged in sandboxed, trust-computing-enabled
| environments, the utility of your general-purpose
| platform will plummet. A dark but entirely possible
| scenario is that it eventually becomes illegal to use
| general-purpose computers to connect to such services,
| because "security".
| outworlder wrote:
| Correct. Current computers would become like Lisp
| Machines. Amazing, but unaffordable for most.
| hootbootscoot wrote:
| the ironic thing is that I program computers for a living
| yet I cannot achieve the basic functional level of a 5
| year old with an Android device...that's not even
| counting the deliberate dark patterns. I see young ones
| automatically pinch-zooming stuff right out of the womb,
| however, so I suspect that it's "just me" having the
| issues...
| alok99 wrote:
| Awfully condescending opinion.
|
| How about making _general_ computing devices more
| accessible via UI/UX to the _general_ public? That
| doesn't seem like such a crazy idea.
| surge wrote:
| We did, it resulted in smartphones and tablets, so what
| the OP is saying applies still. I would argue that's
| "general" computing now. They finished what the webTV
| started, providing a basic platform for people who had
| only very basic needs.
| Zak wrote:
| Smartphones and tablets are trying pretty hard not to be
| general-purpose computers. iOS devices don't run
| arbitrary user-specified code unless hacked, and many
| Android devices are designed not to let the user have
| real admin rights (i.e. root).
|
| This seems to be getting worse, for example Google and
| its financial institution partners have decided that
| general-purpose computing and payments aren't safe
| together. Google Pay suddenly started refusing to do
| contactless payments on my rooted phone.
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| But most people don't need or even want an actual general
| computing device?
|
| It doesn't matter how much you improve it's ui/ux... if
| it's not a desirable feature to the general population,
| few will ever use it.
| the_af wrote:
| > _How about making _general_ computing devices more
| accessible via UI /UX to the _general_ public?_
|
| While I agree with the sentiment, and some of the
| complexity is not essential, the adage still applies:
| "everything should be made as simple as possible, but no
| simpler". At some point, "general computing" means
| there's some irreductible complexity that cannot be made
| simpler without the device ceasing to be general purpose.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| > How about making _general_ computing devices more
| accessible via UI/UX to the _general_ public?
|
| That's pretty much what the iPad is. A general purpose
| computing device but easier to use and with tighter
| security than a PC. At some point you end up sacrificing
| versatility for accessibility to the masses.
| type0 wrote:
| Ipad isn't general computing device, it's a smart gadget,
| same as Smart TV same as IoT lightbulb.
|
| This article explains it well:
| https://hisham.hm/2020/12/10/smart-tech-%e2%80%94-smart-
| for-...
| psychoslave wrote:
| Oh yes, let's leave power to those who know the best,
| they will make what is right for everybody. History
| heavily confirm this pattern.
| athriren wrote:
| amusing how it is nearly always someone in the in-group
| making this decision, that everyone else does not need or
| deserve access to something but i do as a member of this
| group. tale as old as plato "discovering" the ideal form
| of government was a bunch of philosophers telling
| everyone else what to do.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| To be in the 'in' group you could always invest the time
| and learn how to use computers. We're actually a pretty
| welcoming bunch :)
| tj0 wrote:
| My teenage/early 20s self is triggered by this bug report.
| Luckily I evolved and switched to Debian haha
| rewtraw wrote:
| I come to HN for the incredibly out-of-touch takes like this.
| hootbootscoot wrote:
| like which "take"?
|
| you could literally be critiquing any of 10 onion-layers of
| dialog allegedly about an extinct PM client, but it turned
| into a "no one uses computers anymore, just phones" tale.
|
| I cannot tell if you are pro-AIM or a paid Slack user
| wy35 wrote:
| > I cannot tell if you are pro-AIM or a paid Slack user
|
| It's not that deep. Someone unironically saying "Does not
| everyone still use [Pidgin]" is legitimately out of touch
| with consumers today.
| nebolo wrote:
| I used Miranda - seems likes its getting developed
| outworlder wrote:
| There's a Slack plugin for Pidgin!?!
|
| I need to try this immediately.
| cpach wrote:
| I sure do! I used Jabber a lot back in the day.
| asveikau wrote:
| As gaim it was indepensible to someone like me at the time, a
| late 90s american teenager exploring Linux.
|
| But new, younger people are coming up every day and not all of
| them are up on the old hits. AIM is totally dead, and even some
| of the other protocols you might use pidgin for, like standard
| xmpp, as I used to do with pidgin and gtalk, are not as
| relevant as they were before.
| Macha wrote:
| I miss those days. The issues with a modern client for
| something like this is that companies are much more hostile to
| being cut out of the user experience these days. No more is it
| just passive aggressive protocol changes to break third party
| clients, they're more happy to ban end users for using
| unofficial clients (e.g. discord, whatsapp) or require
| secrets/tokens they can go after third party apps for
| including.
| mindcrime wrote:
| Remember it? I use it every day. I assumed pretty much
| everybody else does too. _shrug_
|
| That said, it is annoying how so many chat services have gone
| out of their way to break the ability of 3rd party clients like
| Pidgin to work. :-(
| buzzerbetrayed wrote:
| You assumed pretty much everyone used a desktop specific chat
| app that is 20 years old?
| Gualdrapo wrote:
| And you assumed everyone who wanted a desktop chat app used
| pidgin and nothing else? Because there were plenty of
| "multi-service" apps. It's just that Pidgin was the more
| popular among Linux users.
| astura wrote:
| Yeah, Trillian was, by far, most common among the general
| public (the non-programming, non-techy types). Honestly,
| Pidgin was pretty niche, I don't know of any non-techies
| that used it.
| sli wrote:
| Multi-chat clients had limited appeal by design because
| non-techies were more likely to just pick whatever
| service was the most convenient to them. Seems expected
| that it would be the techie folks consolidating all their
| friends because they were more willing to use multiple
| services than the average non-tech user. Even Trillian
| was fairly niche by comparison, just far less so than
| Pidgin.
|
| Pidgin's psychic mode plugin was great fun, though.
| jcelerier wrote:
| i mean, I'm typing this message from Firefox which has
| pretty much a direct lineage to Netscape (1994), on an OS
| from 1991, using an instruction set which mostly comes from
| the 1970s
| sli wrote:
| That's really not a great comparison, especially since
| browser-based social media and browser-based chat
| services (e.g. Facebook and its chat) are what killed
| services like AOL/ICQ, before later moving into mobile
| apps. Pigdin was fairly niche even back in the early
| 2000s. Facebook is bigger than any of those services ever
| were, because Facebook did a way better job or attracting
| the average person. My family used email before Facebook,
| for example.
|
| Given all those things with hindsight, it makes perfect
| sense for browsers to have long lineages and it makes
| perfect sense why standalone chat services mostly died
| out.
| mindcrime wrote:
| You're taking this WAY too literally.
| leahey wrote:
| And GAIM was based on Gamera, the official AOL Linux client.
| morelisp wrote:
| I don't think so - I believe the original GAIM client used
| the open TOC protocol, e.g. from TiK which was the official
| Tk-based AIM client, some years before Gamera.
| jeramey wrote:
| You are correct. At the time, AOL had released TiK and
| documented the TOC protocol but TiK was a bit slow and
| clunky, so Mark Spencer, the original author of GAIM,
| implemented faster client in C using GTK for the UI. OSCAR
| support came later because OSCAR supported some additional
| presence features (I think?? It's been a while...) and
| because ICQ also used OSCAR.
|
| Pidgin and libpurple also have roots in another project
| called Everybuddy which was one of the first multi-protocol
| integrated free software chat clients. As I recall, Torrey
| Searle started Everybuddy because he was having a hard time
| getting traction on adding multiple protocols to GAIM at
| the time for a variety of reasons my hazy memory doesn't
| really remember.
|
| For a couple of years after GAIM started to get plugin and
| multiple protocol support, much code was shared between
| GAIM and Everybuddy, and then eventually effort centered
| around just one of the code bases which eventually became
| Pidgin and libpurple.
|
| Source: I was involved in GAIM early on and Torrey is a
| friend from those days.
| flatiron wrote:
| I remember when they shut down TOC. I think that was close
| to the time it was renamed gaim to pidgin. My whole college
| career surrounded aol away messages. One time I put an away
| message of "Dave Matthew's coming to play at our school.
| Click here for tickets" and directed them to goatse. Yeah I
| was super cool.
| sv0 wrote:
| I used it as ICQ client back in 2000's. And I use Pidgin as a
| Jabber messenger with self hosted XMPP server.
| jannes wrote:
| There were also Miranda [0] and Trillian back in the day.
| Trillian is still around but it has changed a lot.
|
| [0]: https://sourceforge.net/projects/miranda/
| trts wrote:
| Miranda was (is) awesome, I love that it is styled after the
| original ICQ client. It still worked with Google Chat and FB
| Messenger the last time I tried it (<2 years), but the list
| of people I know who actively use gchat has declined from
| dozens to 5 or fewer.
| vehemenz wrote:
| Yes. It was the de facto AIM client for many years.
| emilsedgh wrote:
| Gaim was one of the best apps out there. I'd absolutely love to
| use it.
|
| But what do I use it for? Nowadays I talk to people on
| Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, Slack and Telegram and none of
| them can be used on Pidgin.
|
| Not Pidgin's fault I know. Just companies trying to lock people
| in.
| spijdar wrote:
| Just a heads up, at least several of those are supported to
| varying degrees. Looks like WhatsApp is supported through its
| web API, and slack and telegram's protocols are supported.
| Facebook messenger is no go, though.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| I recall it well. Was never quite as stable as the native
| clients, so I just used those. And then Steam came along with
| chat and that was that.
| dheera wrote:
| Oh damn, Pidgin. I LOVED that app.
|
| 15 years ago I had ONE messaging app that logged me into MSN,
| ICQ, QQ, Zephyr, Gtalk, Yahoo, AIM, Facebook, and Renren.
|
| On that one messaging app I had either written or downloaded
| plugins for:
|
| * End-to-end encryption (receiver needed the plugin as well)
|
| * Automatic two-way human language translation via online
| translation APIs so I could have a conversation with someone
| who didn't share a common language with me
|
| * Automatic two-way conversion between simplified and
| traditional Chinese. (I can read both, but traditional is
| faster for me, so I had it auto-translate all simplified to
| traditional for me, as well as auto-translate all of my
| outgoing traditional to simplified on a per-user basis for the
| receiver's convenience.)
|
| * Ability to create conversation groups across networks, with
| my account serving as a gateway.
|
| * Automatic rendering of in-line LaTeX math equations.
|
| * Controlling of IOT devices, and allowing access to my dorm
| room for guests by having them send me an instant message with
| a certain secret word.
|
| * Cloud-based logs of all of my messages.
|
| * Online gateway that allowed me to access all my message logs
| from anywhere on any device and any OS with a web browser.
|
| I feel like we've gone backwards. I now have a dozen different
| closed-protocol, walled-garden messaging apps, some of them
| even actively try to PUNISH you for trying to decompile and
| edit them, translation is not automatic, cloud logs only exist
| on Facebook messenger, E2E encryption is skeptically touted and
| paraded as some new thing even though _I personally had real
| open-source E2E encryption 15 years ago on ALL my messengers_ ,
| and everyone is siloed into their own apps and there is no way
| to send messages across networks.
|
| Sigh. Tech in 2021 sucks. I honestly felt my messaging was way
| more advanced 15 years ago.
| mlaretallack wrote:
| yep. I used it when I had to talk to all my friends on msn
| messanger etc.. one app to talk to everyone no matter what they
| where using. Now I have to have 10 different apps to talk to
| just 10 friends.
| zshift wrote:
| I had a real Obi Wan Kenobi moment when I saw this at the top
| of hackernews.
| valarauko wrote:
| I wonder if he means old Ben Kenobi
| dewarrn1 wrote:
| These are not the IM protocols you seek.
|
| On-topic, Pidgin remains great, I still install it on every
| new desktop, but I haven't fired it up in years. I suppose
| it's been displaced by Slack, more's the pity.
| ehsankia wrote:
| I still have my .purple backup. It even had a Steam plugin I
| recall which was great since Steam itself didn't have chat
| logs.
| wruza wrote:
| If anyone is curious why it is called .purple, here you go:
| https://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/WhatIsLibpurple
| thesuitonym wrote:
| That doesn't really answer _why_ it 's called purple. As I
| recall, there used to be something about it being named for
| the PRogram PLugins (prpl) that (then) Gaim used.
| meow112012 wrote:
| When they renamed the app, I pruned my chat logs by some
| mistake renaming the logging folders. I lost my most
| important logs then :(
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| Don't forget the numerous add-ons, skins if I remember
| correctly end-to-end encryption was just a PGP add-on away and
| you're right pidgin was one of the first things I installed on
| Linux machines and it's clone Adium for Mac OSX[1].
|
| Sadly I don't do real-time communication anymore and even if I
| do I don't think any of my pidgin/adium (XMPP) contacts still
| use them.
|
| [1] https://adium.im/
| thesuitonym wrote:
| I didn't even know Pidgin had skins. The big attraction for
| me was that I didn't have to pick an obnoxious skin like
| Trillian. It just used whatever your system theme was, and
| the default GTK skin looked like it belonged in Windows XP.
| nikolay wrote:
| I've used on Windows and it was quite buggy and crashy at the
| time... over a decade ago.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| Oh yes. Good times. That's when I still occasionally used AIM.
| severino wrote:
| Yes, unless you used KDE, in which case you installed Kopete.
| reddotX wrote:
| pidgin + ubuntu. i remember
| meow112012 wrote:
| yes I do, a lot. Pidgin is awesome. I used it with Yahoo, irc
| chat. Unfortunately my life is all about slack and telegram
| today :(
| mseidl wrote:
| I used pidgin along time ago when I was using aim/msn/yahoo.
|
| It's been a REALLY long time.
| tmpxgdqrcKFuG wrote:
| I miss Adium
|
| Trillian _used_ to be like Pidgin and Adium on Windows but then
| they went and made its own IM service.
| saas_sam wrote:
| I haven't used Adium in like 15 years but that honking noise
| will be with me for eternity.
| grishka wrote:
| Adium still works on modern macOS, in fact, I'm running it
| right now for IRC. And there's already an issue on github
| asking about M1 support :)
| canistr wrote:
| Using Pidgin with OTR was the way to go for private chats.
| _shrug_
| morsch wrote:
| This didn't make me try out Pidgin again, but it _did_ make me
| _ls ~ /.purple_: Turns out there are some conversations from
| 2008-2011 that have carried over through my various Linux
| reinstalls since then. Fun!
| rijoja wrote:
| Ah it's still alive. If not a time for revival! So many good
| memories!!
| rco8786 wrote:
| Holy cow, i had no idea Pidgin was still around
| bingo_cannon wrote:
| Oof I still remember the update that disabled re-sizing of the
| text box and people were up in arms about it. And there was a
| fork of Pidgin over it.
| cptskippy wrote:
| I used Pidgin for over a decade to chat with friends across ICQ,
| AIM, Gtalk, Hangouts, and YIM. I eventually gave up because the
| chat clients I needed weren't supported and keeping it working
| with things like Hangouts became tedious.
|
| I don't feel like downloading DLLs from GitHub and copying them
| into directories to get Emoji support or to update Plug-ins that
| break month to month.
| krisgenre wrote:
| Ah! the glorious days of integrated chat clients.
|
| I had friends of MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, GTalk and for a
| very limited time ICQ (Actually it was the same guys on all
| networks :) ). There weren't any network effort, people were
| willing to try out different IMs for their uniqueness.
|
| Lots of companies were trying to produce integrated chat clients
| - Pidgin, Meebo, Trillian, Digsby and a whole lot of guys on
| Mobile targeting Symbian OS (could recollect only Nimbuzz
| though.) I loved Digsby because it acted as a POP client too.
|
| I even worked for a company that forked Ignite Realtime Spark and
| tried adding Gtalk and MSN support. When I was freelancing one
| guy asked me to clone meebo for $500 .. and I accepted :facepalm.
| ravenstine wrote:
| > When I was freelancing one guy asked me to clone meebo for
| $500 .. and I accepted :facepalm.
|
| We've all said yes to those kinds of deals at least once. I
| once did a website for a company full-stack from setting up the
| backend to design and frontend JS for ~$600. I wasn't as
| experienced so I didn't value my work as much as I should have.
| ComodoHacker wrote:
| Miranda IM, anyone?
| remux wrote:
| I have used Miranda IM every day <3
| santah wrote:
| Yep!
| MivLives wrote:
| I used Digsby for so long, once they stopped developing was
| about the time I moved off those chat clients to Skype.
|
| Meebo too, back in high school we'd play cat and mouse with
| Meebo Repeater, and a few other fun sites (an image board for
| our school, a really rough freeware proxy) with the IT guys.
| All run out of old pcs we had in our closests. Highlight was
| when they redirected the free url we were using to Barney.com
| furyofantares wrote:
| I stopped using Pidgin back when everyone I know stopped using
| ICQ, MSN, AIM, and it was all down to Gtalk anyway. Hadn't really
| noticed the re-explosion for some reason, but looking at the list
| of what Pidgin supports, I'm using quite a few things on the list
| (Steam, Discord, Slack, FB Messenger)
| rukshn wrote:
| I can remember how I was able to chat with my Facebook friends
| with Pidgin, those were the days.
|
| I don't think Facebook will allow any client to support chat like
| they used to do back in the days, unless you do some wired
| bridging hacks like you have to do in Matrix
|
| Edit - fixed typo
| noisy_boy wrote:
| I remember using Pidgin for my accounts on Facebook, Gmail and
| Yahoo - happy days :)
| lostmsu wrote:
| I still use Messenger via Pidgin.
|
| My biggest gripe is lack of support for latest Unicode emoji.
| rukshn wrote:
| How does it work now? usually back in the day I had to
| download a plugin enter email/username or password. and
| that's it.
|
| Does it require some bridge hack or something like that?
| lostmsu wrote:
| It looks like they reverse-engineered the Android client.
|
| https://github.com/dequis/purple-facebook
| hackerpain wrote:
| Using it since a decade, I faced bugs in the PGP encryption add
| on, they need to work on a lot of things to make it secure. This
| is my go-to Jabber client.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Man. I see the pidgin chat client is at the top of HN, and I was
| thinking. I use Mattermost, Slack, Discord, and on occasion
| Facebook, and Pidgin has plugins for all of them. Maybe this
| would be nice.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| I gave it an honest try this morning. Managed to get Facebook
| and Slack integrated. The Mattermost plugin did not work, and
| is not actively maintained.
|
| In the end I did not like the experience. inline images/web-
| previews, etc were not enabled (possible by plugin?), ui was a
| bit clunky and disorganized. Not sure if that is pidgin or the
| plugins fault.
| albertzeyer wrote:
| Adium (https://adium.im/) used to be the MacOSX native version
| (port) of Pidgin. It seems they still recommend it. However,
| Adium seems kind of dead? Last commit
| (https://github.com/adium/adium/) was in 2016.
|
| I build a MacOSX app bundle for the original Pidgin long time ago
| (https://sourceforge.net/projects/pidgin-macosx/). At that point
| in time, this was not so trivial, as the GTK support for native
| MacOSX was experimental (http://www.gtk-osx.org/). You could
| simply use the X11 GTK version but I rather wanted to have a
| native version. I have no idea what the current state is with GTK
| on MacOSX. This Pidgin build is obviously very outdated now (from
| 2009), and probably does not run on recent MacOSX versions (they
| are frequently breaking backward compatibility...).
| pmlnr wrote:
| Adium is a frontend on libpurple. The frontend can be sort of
| happily dead if the backend - and it's plugins - are updated.
| [deleted]
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| GTK on macOS is completely fine, unless newer versions of GTK
| have borked it. We use GTK2 for Ardour (cross platform DAW) and
| there are almost no issues. I did contribute numerous important
| patches for the quartz backend along the way.
| olq wrote:
| Looks like work is being done in a branch:
| https://github.com/adium/adium/commits/adium-1.5.11.asher.10...
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| It would be nice if it did inline images, inline web-previews,
| inline video players, etc, if not by default, then with clear
| path to enabling.
| hestefisk wrote:
| Does anyone know if the WhatsApp plugin works?
| pmlnr wrote:
| Yes, it is. You're looking for this:
| https://github.com/hoehermann/purple-gowhatsapp
|
| It has limitations, especially on media.
| airnomad wrote:
| Do you guys remember Meebo? They had web based interface built on
| top of libpurple which powers Pidgin too.
|
| Google bought them and shut them down.
| onedr0p wrote:
| > Google bought them and shut them down.
|
| This is the way.
| azhenley wrote:
| Two days ago Beeper, a (almost?) universal chat app, was
| discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25848278
| RogantisAgat wrote:
| I'd say the thing that makes Pidgin more attractive is the fact
| it's free, whereas Beeper is $10/mo (unless you host the entire
| stack yourself, and at that point you can't use the Beeper
| app). Granted, Beeper has mobile apps going for it.
| smt88 wrote:
| Pidgin is basically dead. When all the big messengers closed
| off their protocols, keeping compatibility became very labor
| intensive. It doesn't look like any FOSS has been able to do
| it, so I'm optimistic about Beeper.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| They are two different classes of applications. Beeper uses
| transports (or 'bridges'), Pidgin is a multiprotocol client.
| tootie wrote:
| There's been such an enormous amount of churn in the IM client
| market for an industry that hasn't seen significant innovation
| since the days of dial-up.
| flatiron wrote:
| I think discord/slack/teams seem to have shaken up the IM
| market recently.
| tootie wrote:
| Of course, and we'll new dominant players in 5 years. My
| point is just that none of these do anything radically
| different from IRC. Channel-based as the primary mode (as
| opposed to direct) is a bit of paradigm shift in terms of UX,
| but it's just a veneer on group chats that have existed
| forever. And obviously, they've all been adapted to
| web/smartphones as opposed to terminal. But in terms of what
| kind of communication they enable, it's absolutely nothing
| new. I could do this kind of thing on Quantum Link on my
| Commodore.
| anthony_barker wrote:
| i like Matrix Element as they are trying to redo IRC with
| encryption.
| symlinkk wrote:
| Wow, you could send videos, pictures, and markdown on your
| Commodore?
| handoflixue wrote:
| They did make modems for the Commodore, yes...
|
| The big obstacle to sending video back in those days was
| one of bandwidth and storage space - it's not difficult
| to add to the protocols. IRC is a pretty well-known
| client for easily sending files - it's purely a design
| decision not to display them in-line like Discord and
| Slack.
| realityking wrote:
| The big revolution in IM clients/protocol was the move to
| mobile. All the old protocols require a constant connection to
| the server to receive new messages. They were not designed with
| push notifications in mind.
|
| I remember some early IM clients for the iPhone that you had to
| keep open to be alerted to a new message. Not fun.
| proverbialbunny wrote:
| I'd consider stickies a decent jump.
|
| My past self never would have predicted the world has moved to
| a form of hieroglyphics of fuzzy animals to talk to each other.
| arbitrage wrote:
| it's semantics without slavish adherence to syntax. it's
| really not that much of a stretch to see that the imbuing of
| ambiguity is a net positive to some people in some
| circumstances, and is a natural evolution of formalized
| language systems in a non-optimally constrained environment.
| bitigchi wrote:
| Ah, good old Pidgin (and Adium). Both are no-nonsense straight
| on-point software. We need them more these days.
| turlando wrote:
| When XMPP was quite widespread and lots of my friends used it
| Pidgin was my trusted software. I'm very happy it's still being
| maintained and to see lots of plugin for new IM
| protocols/services (Telegram for instance).
|
| It's a pity that the font on the new website is too thin for me
| and very hard to read :\
| lhball wrote:
| It's wild that this is still around. Just re-installed it to
| manage my Discord, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Telegram all in the
| same place =-)
| [deleted]
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Still using it as my Hangouts client via ye-olde GTalk plugin,
| even though I thought Google had stopped supporting it.
|
| I've debated several times switching over to the purple-hangouts
| plugin so that I can get proper groupchat support, but the last
| time I tried it wanted me to do some shady-looking stuff with
| signing into Google and using the Developer Tools to grab the
| authentication key.
| smt88 wrote:
| They're killing Hangouts soon, so this is probably moot anyway.
| H1Supreme wrote:
| I thought it was just transitioning to Chat?
| smt88 wrote:
| Yes, but Chat is a totally different code base. Hangouts
| API clients will stop working.
| Rooster61 wrote:
| Considering this is open source (which I'm assuming includes the
| plugins), wouldn't this be a much better alternative to the
| native apps on mobile? Curious as to why this hasn't been ported
| to Android/iOS. I'd much prefer this over apps that need
| permission to my blood type to function.
|
| Pidgin was great back in the day for convenience, but there is a
| legitimate argument to be made for privacy here too.
|
| EDIT: It just occurred to me that this would probably work on
| linux phones. Anyone with a Pinephone or Librem 5 tried this?
| mr_gibbins wrote:
| If it were ported to Android/iOS, it'd need to adhere to the
| relevant standards from Google/Apple. If it did (and that's a
| hard task itself, see every other 'Google/Apple blocked my app'
| thread on HN) then it'd quickly be squashed by the other major
| competitors.
|
| Can't have a non-monetised, FOSS, universal application
| available in the app stores! That's like ... that's like
| COMMUNISM, or something! /s
| GlTChWhISKY wrote:
| The simple answer is the developer (Gary) doesnt have the time.
| The project needs help. Rwgrim on twitch is the lead dev
| Implicated wrote:
| https://www.twitch.tv/rw_grim
| fattire wrote:
| For whatever reason I kind of remember
| Gaim/Adium/Pidgin/libpurple had a run of security issues back
| in the day too.. I assume that stuff got fixed up by now... but
| I think at the time that accounted for its decline. Oh, now
| that I think of it wasn't XMPP (streaming XML) originally
| invented for Jabber which Pidgin supported?
| sneak wrote:
| iOS applications aren't allowed to stay awake constantly
| talking to a bunch of different network services.
|
| For iOS IM to work, a centralized server (and corresponding
| developer ID) has to send a notification to you, sent first to
| Apple to be proxied via Apple's push notification service
| (APNS) to which each iOS device maintains a persistent
| connection.
|
| This means that some third party service has to know when you
| get a message (and thus needs to proxy your connections to the
| IM services, and know your credentials and see your message
| contents) to be able to know when to send that notification.
|
| This (and Signal now replacing the cryptographically shattered
| iMessage) is probably the main reason I'm switching to Android;
| truly decentralized/private notifications aren't really
| possible on iOS. They have to come from the app developer's own
| 24/7 online servers, sent from them to you via Apple servers,
| which means that federated stuff is basically out without
| providing your login details to the developer (which of course
| lets them see all your messages). This is also why almost no
| ActivityPub/fediverse clients can notify you of DMs on iOS
| either if you run your own instance.
|
| I know there's Background App Refresh now that lets apps wake
| up periodically to download stuff; I'm not sure if such polling
| can fire off notifications from the local app. It's probably
| too much latency for IM, however, due to the fact that
| Background App Refresh isn't (last I looked) allowed to run
| continuously (for battery reasons).
| wruza wrote:
| You don't have to put an entire message text into APNS
| notification. Apple (and google GCM, and webpush)
| notifications only deliver a structured event to the
| application (which may or may not contain any text), and once
| the app is activated (if not yet), it has to connect to its
| own server to get a full representation of what was sent,
| update vv-status, etc. APNS/GCM are _not_ instant messengers
| on their own, though may be used as such in simple cases.
|
| _the main reason I 'm switching to Android_
|
| You may be interested in reading this comment then: https://w
| ww.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/ap9lin/comment/eg7v...
|
| Likely, iOS version of Signal uses the same "empty ping"
| technique, so you don't have to worry about Apple reading
| your texts, unless you're concerned with metadata leak. But
| unless they're spoofing a websocket with fake packets, it
| will leak anyway.
| novok wrote:
| You can create local notifications any time your app is
| active, which includes the background. AFAIK signal does
| empty APNS push to wake and then pulls data with it's own
| connection and then displays text content with a local
| notification.
|
| The main reason for the restriction to apple-only for
| notification services is battery life, and they've been
| proven right by bad behavior demonstrated on android.
|
| Interestingly, if your a VOIP app you can actually circumvent
| a lot of the background networking restrictions, but it's
| still hard to do when you don't have an active call in place.
| You also have to be an actual VOIP app to get approved with
| that entitlement. Which wouldn't be hard to get approval for
| if you made a fork of signal for example, since it does have
| real VOIP capabilities inside.
|
| Either way the battery life of your device would be worse
| with your custom VOIP app always keeping a connection open
| vs. apple's native OS notification system.
| lxgr wrote:
| > Interestingly, if your a VOIP app you can actually
| circumvent a lot of the background networking restrictions
|
| These APIs were removed a while ago. As an example, pure
| SIP clients (without a SIP<->APNs proxy operated by the app
| developer) are no longer possible for iOS.
| lxgr wrote:
| > This (and Signal now replacing the cryptographically
| shattered iMessage) is probably the main reason I'm switching
| to Android
|
| Android seems to be headed the opposite direction from Apple
| when it comes to background service execution and network
| connectivity. I wouldn't be surprised if background network
| connections are the next thing to go.
|
| > which means that federated stuff is basically out without
| providing your login details to the developer
|
| It's definitely possible to support federated push, although
| it's admittedly more work for app/protocol developers: The
| app developer would have to set up a "push proxy" server that
| accepts push notifications addressed to a specific iOS
| device.
|
| It would be nice if Apple was to allow optional sourcing of
| "anonymous" pushes for such use cases, but that doesn't seem
| to be in line with their desired level of control.
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| Android is heading in the same direction with GCM.
| lxgr wrote:
| Exactly, maybe I was unclear: Apple has been adding more
| and more background execution modes to iOS over the
| years, while Google has been steadily removing them from
| Android (and nudging developers towards GCM instead).
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| >cryptographically shattered iMessage
|
| Could you expand on this? I did a quick search but I don't
| see anything relevant that's more recent than 2016.
| srgpqt wrote:
| iCloud backups contain iMessage encryption keys so the
| messages can be decrypted and read by Apple.
| MrAlex94 wrote:
| Not sure if this has changed, but at least on why it's not on
| iOS [1]:
|
| > In a nutshell, the Apple Developer Agreement is the biggest
| "problem" preventing a Pidgin build for iOS devices. We won't
| quote the exact text here, but the Agreement requires that
| developers allow Apple to impose additional restrictions on
| applications above and beyond the application's own license.
| Among these additional restrictions are the well-known
| "5-device limit" and a prohibition on redistribution of the
| application. It is also quite clear from the terms of the
| Agreement that the developer of an application is not the
| distributor of the application in the App Store--Apple is.
|
| > The additional restrictions required by Apple directly
| violate the GPL Pidgin is licensed under (Pidgin is licensed as
| "GPLv2 or later," and cannot transition to GPLv3 for a number
| of reasons not suited for this topic). GPLv2 forbids adding
| restrictions above and beyond those included in the GPL's own
| text, thus any distribution via Apple's App Store is a direct
| violation of the GPL. This is the root of the problem.
|
| https://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/WhyNoiOSVersion
| andai wrote:
| With such a commitment to free software, isn't it a bit
| ironic they ported it to Windows?
| Macha wrote:
| Anyone can build and run their own software on Windows, so
| distributing software for Windows is not a GPL violation,
| whereas distributing iOS apps via the app store runs afoul
| of the anti-tivo clauses in GPL3
| moistbar wrote:
| If Windows doesn't impose those restrictions, it makes more
| sense to port it there than to MacOS.
| mywittyname wrote:
| No, it's not ironic. Windows imposes no such limitation on
| developers. Microsoft certainly doesn't assume exclusive
| rights to distribution of every piece of software that can
| be installed on Windows.
| lxgr wrote:
| > the well-known "5-device limit"
|
| Sorry, but I'm not familiar with this - could you share more
| please?
| asah wrote:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=Apple+Developer+Agreement+5
| +...
|
| TIL it's now 10 devices...
| RL_Quine wrote:
| Why would that ever be a consideration?
| lsaferite wrote:
| Distribution restrictions on top of GPL and they don't
| own the copyright on all the code without a CLA which
| prevents licensing under something other than GPL for the
| App Store.
| shoeffner wrote:
| iPad, iPod, iPhone, MBP, iMac, AppleWatch, ... oh, that's
| already six devices tied to the same account.
|
| I think the idea is that you don't tie all your friends'
| devices to your account to share apps etc., but I am just
| guessing.
| RL_Quine wrote:
| I can find no information about what limit they're
| claiming. You can use a maximum of 5 different Apple ID
| simultaneously on a device but that's pretty obscure.
| dijit wrote:
| it is 5 devices that you can use personally with an Apple
| ID (so, you as a single person can own 5 devices that can
| receive things you've paid for on the app store, like
| music and programs.).
|
| It has subsequently been increased to 10.
| amenod wrote:
| I believe the GP was just posting the text from Pidgine
| website, not writing it.
|
| Quick search reveals that up to 5 devices can be tied to
| the same Apple account:
| https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8030144
| faitswulff wrote:
| I wonder if you could just compile it to webassembly as a
| progressive web app at this point...
| glitchc wrote:
| There's an easy way to fix this. The Pidgin iOS app could be
| forked into a different licensing model. It also need not be
| open source, just demonstrate feature parity. Another way is
| to modularize the core messaging layer under a BSD license,
| and have the desktop app and iOS app both implement the
| front-end (and OS specific functionality) under distinct
| licenses.
|
| There are many ways to skin this cat.
| Macha wrote:
| libpurple (the actual messaging library) is already
| modularised, many different people mantain[ed] different
| modules, it's been used my many third party messaging
| clients including Adium and multi-IM browser clients from
| those days like Meebo or imo.
|
| It's not a commercial project with a CLA, it doesn't have a
| single owner, many of the people who contributed major
| parts have moved on or would object to a license change
| from copyleft to permissive, so it's not a matter of "just
| change" the license. And libpurple is the real meat of the
| project.
| virtue3 wrote:
| Meebo was the shit back then. (In browser GAIM, even fb
| chat, irc, etc).
|
| I followed a few of the developers for a bit as I really
| wanted to work there. I believed they got aquired into
| the g+ team (gchat? maybe?).
| Nextgrid wrote:
| I don't understand the logic where releasing something under
| GPL + a restrictive license is considered worse than
| releasing under GPL only.
|
| What is lost when they make Pidgin available on the App Store
| (under the restrictive App Store license) + under GPL (on
| their website) as opposed to not having an App Store version
| in the first place and releasing under the GPL only?
|
| I don't see how the presence of a second, more restrictive
| license invalidates the GPL given that anyone willing to take
| advantage of something not allowed under the more restrictive
| license can still do so under GPL?
| amenod wrote:
| GPL doesn't allow anyone to put too much restrictions on
| the software. This is the point - it protects users'
| interests.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| But my point is that if the code itself remains under the
| GPL, how does publishing an alternate version of it
| "undo" the GPL considering all the rights restricted by
| the second license would still be available under the
| GPL?
| toast0 wrote:
| If they don't have the ability to change the license (which
| it sounds like they might not; most likely some of the code
| is owned by others?), they can't distribute it under GPL +
| more restrictive terms, because what would be lost is their
| license to distribute the code.
| rcxdude wrote:
| The maintainers likely don't own the copyright on the
| entire codebase, and so likely cannot license it under
| anything other than the GPL. Incorporating GPL code into an
| app on the app store is not possible without breaking
| either the app store's rules or the GPL's rules (most
| likely the GPL, which would effectively remove the
| maintainer's rights to distribute that code).
| gogopuppygogo wrote:
| Have you seen the latest review of the Librem 5 from Linus Tech
| Tips? The phone seems to run Linux apps fine... it doesn't have
| working camera drivers a year after release though...
|
| https://youtu.be/BH8DRyKUZDg
|
| So Pidgin (gaim for those of us old enough to remember those
| days) should run fine without a port.
| fsflover wrote:
| > it doesn't have working camera drivers a year after release
| though...
|
| The problem is the lack of SoC documentation. There is some
| progress for the camera though:
| https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/linux-
| next/-/issues/44#note_1....
| eximius wrote:
| Hell, I still don't _have_ my damn order and I placed it in
| Oct. 2017. Their last post said early orders would be
| completed by EOY, but my last email to support they said
| another _two months_.
|
| I want to be supportive but holy hell am I frustrated.
| Rooster61 wrote:
| > should run fine without a port
|
| Sure. Was saying that this should work out of the box (at
| least for the most part) on a linux phone. No port necessary.
| dylan-m wrote:
| Pidgin's libpurple library was a core part of Palm's WebOS.
| They were really focused on integrating different chat services
| like that. For Librem 5, they're using Telepathy quite heavily,
| which is similar but designed more as an OS component (and full
| of XML).
| mouldysammich wrote:
| Chatty, from librem uses libpurple, which pidgin is built on,
| for its sms app so it also supports xmpp, i dont think itd be
| hard to support the other services libpurple supports, i found
| it pretty easy to add purple-facebook support
| toast0 wrote:
| Background execution restrictions mean you would not be able to
| be online except when the app was in the foreground for the
| most part on iOS; on Android, you have inconsistent access to
| cpu and network in the background.
|
| You really need push notifications, but AFAIK, push tokens are
| tied to the app developer; you can't give an random server a
| token from your app, because they won't be able to push to you.
| virtue3 wrote:
| Yeah that would be expensive for the pidgin maintainers, if
| the other message services had a way to do that via oauth or
| some such that would be different but entirely not in their
| interests.
| bratch wrote:
| It still works great on the Nokia N900!
|
| https://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/UsingPidgin/N900
| anthony_barker wrote:
| you still use the n900?
| _joel wrote:
| Probably the most seamless chat client I used (XMMP, IRC, etc)
| years back. Not used it in years, will check it out again.
| pachico wrote:
| I used to love it. I then gradually got myself out of chats for
| productivity reasons and kept Slack since my company uses it.
| Fabricio20 wrote:
| New website looks cool, however I shall rant once again - I spent
| quite a bit of time searching for some screenshots of the
| application as well as an "about" section describing what it is,
| only to find some of it on the old website.
|
| It's cool to do a refresh but please bring the screenshots back
| and write a bit more about it on the about page - it's empty
| right now!
| ephaeton wrote:
| still using finch (libpurple text ui client coming from the same
| corner) on a daily basis. Easy to keep it running on a tmux
| session on my server, ready for a ssh/mosh + tmux attach.
| Prevents all the syncing of chat histories everywhere...
| erikschoster wrote:
| I <3 finch too, though I haven't used it in quite a while. It
| has a really impressive TUI with windowing etc.
|
| For example:
| https://inconsolation.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/2013-01-24...
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| I used to use it, the later telepathy/empathy stuff on Gnome as
| well. At some point I started using Facebook, and it obviated the
| need for a chat client running all the time. Work places seem to
| be enamored with Slack these days.
|
| Bummer, can't even remember my old logins. Not ICQ nor MSN,
| Jabber on Facebook doesn't work any longer, might be able to
| figure out the Yahoo, hmm.
| k__ wrote:
| I used it back in the days with MSN, AIM, and ICQ. But it didn't
| work as good with the switch of communication to mobile and the
| rise of WhatsApp and FB Messenger.
|
| Anyone got fresh experience?
| mushufasa wrote:
| the main maintainer livestreams his work on pidgin on twitch
| https://www.twitch.tv/rw_grim
| zohvek wrote:
| One of the main developers of pidgin streams on twitch.
| https://www.twitch.tv/rw_grim
| tylerjwilk00 wrote:
| Woah! Totally forgot about this. This was the go to chat client
| on all my Linux boxes back in the day. Was a great piece of must
| have software back when IM was the primary communication method
| among my internet friends.
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| The website has a new look and feel, but there is something I
| found really annoying. If you go to the Plugin page you might be
| thrilled (like me) to see Telegram and Whatsapp icons among many
| others suggesting the possibility of making Pidgin your nirvana
| IM. Well, the Whatsapp plugin in not updated since 2016. So...
| that was a real bummer. I'd be nice to review that plugin list
| and be more precise about what's available and what's not.
| madrox wrote:
| I was thinking about Pidgin the other day when Beeper was on the
| front page. It seems we're back on the consolidation bandwagon
| for IM clients.
|
| Which leaves me more grateful than ever that browsers have (more
| or less) avoided this yoyo between segmentation and consolidation
| that messaging clients have. It's what keeps me feeling
| optimistic about the web vs any kind of alternative open protocol
| for two-way communication like Scuttlebutt.
| kristianpaul wrote:
| Back to use pidgin then!
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