Instant Messaging in Fedora Workstation

[Michael Catanzaro]

On Fri, 2015-04-24 at 18:55 +0200, Jiri Eischmann wrote:
> 
> It pretty much comes down to a question if we want to build a well
> integrated multi-protocol client (continuing with Empathy/Pidgin, or
> starting GNOME Chat) or if we should give it up and embrace all those
> popular, unfortunately mostly closed services (Skype, Messenger,
> Hangouts, Telegram...) and make them as integrated in the desktop as
> possible. The latter would probably clash a bit with one of our 4
> foundation - freedom.

I have no idea what we would do to make Skype "integrate better." If
the Skype developers want it to not look like Windows 95, that's on
them.

Hangouts: we can kind of support with a web app, but Google+ is broken
in WebKitGTK+ 2.8, so... that would need to be fixed. It's a
regression from 2.6, but not really possible to bisect due to long
build times and GTK port build breaks.

Facebook XMPP is being dropped next week. We actually have top-class
Facebook support right now, but it's about to disappear. Bye Facebook.
We could provide the web app in Software, though. That's just a matter
of writing an appdata file.

GNOME Chat is the way forward, but with zero developers it isn't going
anywhere. Even with a huge team, it will obviously never be able to
support Skype, Hangouts, or Facebook.

Pessimism aside: Telegram looks interesting. I didn't realize it was
so popular, or that the protocol was open, or that they have a GPLv3+
client for Linux. This, we should investigate further.

Michael