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mjr

Member

From: Norfolk

Registered: 2016-10-17

Posts: 22

Website

Promoting Jabber / XMPP use

Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP, also known as its earlier name Jabber) is basically a useful multiserver messaging system which can store messages.  Think web or internet relay chat (IRC) which stores messages until you connect next time, or a free/libre multi-provider Whatsapp-style messaging service.  It can also support phone/video calling, although I think not all clients or providers do.

There's choice of apps and of providers but that's not always a good thing, as it makes it more difficult to recommend things.  Proprietary services offer a take-it-or-leave-it no choice approach which people seem to find simpler.

How can we promote this sort of service best and XMPP in particular?  What XMPP clients on phones work well?  Are there good web clients?  What providers are easy to sign up for and not evil? What else am I forgetting?

Xylon

Administrator

From: Worthing, South East

Registered: 2016-10-16

Posts: 47

Website

Re: Promoting Jabber / XMPP use

Well I've never tried XMPP... should do so I guess.

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mjr

Member

From: Norfolk

Registered: 2016-10-17

Posts: 22

Website

Re: Promoting Jabber / XMPP use

Well I've never tried XMPP... should do so I guess.

Let me know if you'd like to chat as a test. I'm not going to publish my ID just yet, though.

So far, it seems like gajim is the easiest desktop client that I've tested but I've not tried its OTR (Off The Record) yet because my OTR contact hasn't been online at the same time and I think I may need to install some optional plugin.  It looks like it can do audio/video calling, but I've no-one to test that with yet.

On Android/F-Droid, beem is slick and has OTR (Off The Record), but can't do multi-user chat/conference (MUC) as far as I can tell.  Tigase can do MUC, but not OTR that I can see.

mjr

Member

From: Norfolk

Registered: 2016-10-17

Posts: 22

Website

Re: Promoting Jabber / XMPP use

I should have mentioned Conversations for Android (fairly slick and has OTR but fairly large) and I think Pidgin on Gnome can do XMPP too but I don't remember if it does OTR - anyone know?

mjr

Member

From: Norfolk

Registered: 2016-10-17

Posts: 22

Website

Re: Promoting Jabber / XMPP use

Some time last year, I sent myself a link to https://blog.windfluechter.net/content/ … and-others which discusses some similar topics.

bashrc

Member

Registered: 2016-10-18

Posts: 5

Re: Promoting Jabber / XMPP use

I'd recommend using the Conversations app on mobile or on a desktop system Pidgin with OTR or Lurch or Gajim with the OTR or OMEMO plugin.

https://conversations.im
https://github.com/gkdr/lurch

You can also proxy those through Tor (Orbot on mobile) and that will provide some level of protection for the metadata. You can even set up XMPP servers to run from an onion address.