COllaborative DEcision MAking (codema.in)

Instant messaging apps / protocols

Pirate Praveen Tue 1 Oct 2024 1:30PMPublicSeen by 25

I think we will need to work in parallel to get good experience for Signal, Matrix and XMPP. Picking one protocol / app won't be ideal. So people who prefer each app / protocol can get missing features implemented for their favorite protocol / app.

SilmathoronTue 1 Oct 2024 1:32PM

Aren't there already well identified apps for each protocol that we could support? (Flare, Fractal, Dino)

Pirate PraveenTue 1 Oct 2024 1:33PM

I will start with XMPP as that is what I personally prefer.

So far the best option seems to be Dino - it fits on mobile screen and works reasonably well / actively maintained.

Pirate PraveenTue 1 Oct 2024 1:44PM

For Dino,

  1. Most annoying missing feature is lack of moderation support. You feel helpless when there is a spam / obscene image posted in a public group.

  2. Missing support for giving owner / admin privileges when creating a group.

  3. Easy on boarding with Quicksy / Prav (sign up with sms otp and discover contacts using phone directory)

MariusTue 1 Oct 2024 3:12PM

Just my personal opinion: I would concentrate on Signal and Matrix due to the number of people using it. Matrix is already very well covered by Fractal, not much to do for mobile except small details. Signal works on e.g. tje FLX1 with their waydroid fork well but sharing of e.g. pictures is ofc only possible within the android "world" or quite complicated via the shared folder with the linux. A native app would be awesome ofc but a huge effort.

MariusTue 1 Oct 2024 4:36PM

I actually did not know about Flare, will try it out!

FossmanWed 2 Oct 2024 7:50AM

In addition to XMPP and Matrix, what about adding Chatmail? https://delta.chat/en/chatmail Fast e2ee chats over email!

Badri SunderarajanThu 3 Oct 2024 9:01AM

Having used Mobian for a bit, I'm a bit more in favour of Chatty now since it requires keeping only one app running in the background instead of different ones for XMPP and Matrix.

Unfortunately the support for those protocols is not yet very stable. OMEMO encryption for XMPP is broken and the XMPP backend hasn't been updated for a while (it's currently looking for a maintainer); Matrix is better but doesn't yet support starting new chats. But maybe we can direct resources to make it work if we're interested. (I heard that OMEMO is working reasonably well in Pidgin, which uses the same libpurple backend as Chatty).

On the other hand if Unified Push is implemented then requiring multiple apps won't be as big of a deal (although it'll still be nice in some ways)

Pick one XMPP app to support

poll by Pirate Praveen Closed Thu 10 Oct 2024 11:00AM

Outcome
by Pirate Praveen Sat 12 Oct 2024 8:47PM

Dino seems to be the favorite for 64% of people who participated (11 people voted, ie 33% of the current group strength).

What is this poll about?

We need to pick one XMPP app to support.

Why is this important?

Then we can try and implement missing features.

What are you asking people to do?

Choose between Dino and Chatty.

Choose the option(s) you favor.

Results

Pirate PraveenThu 3 Oct 2024 10:47AM

Dino

Dino works well on mobile with omemo support and it is actively maintained.

Badri SunderarajanThu 3 Oct 2024 10:47AM

Dino

I'd like to see better XMPP support in Chatty, but Dino is already in a usable state. It just needs a few glitches fixed to make it work perfectly in Phosh (mainly UI and touch related tweaks, from my experience) and perhaps a few general XMPP related bugfixes. So it makes sense to focus on Dino for now.

Later, it would be nice to focus on making libdino usable as a backend for other projects too (eg. Chatty, some Qt app; basically it'll help to have a mature XMPP backend available for use)

Load More