As you can tell by the length of my last post, thinking about this situation has got me upset.
So upset, that right now I've decided to launch a non-profit, open collective organization called OOMA. Only One Messaging App.
OOMA will be comprised of the millions of people who are annoyed and upset at the result of tech companies competing for our communication. We are taking things into our own hands. We are agreeing to switch to ONE service, for ALL of our messaging needs. All of us, all over the world, all at once.
We are going to do 5 things, in order: 1. Choose a switch date. 2. Define a spec for the "perfect messaging app" (encryption, licensing, finance model, features, tech, etc.) 3. Invite companies to pitch their app, and/or secure funding to develop our own to spec. 4. Spread the word. 5. Make the switch.
I'm going to prepare a marketing web page and (ironically) a discord server right now. At the very worst it's a fun side project and way to express my anger.
EDIT: OOMA server is live. If you think an app is not the solution, come tell us why: https://discord.gg/CmdgUp
What's the old phrase? If it looks stupid but it works, its not stupid. Say hello to the world's most valuable public company and what is commonly regarded as the world's highest quality messaging network.
A truth technologists hate hearing: You cannot, under any circumstances, solve problems created by code by creating more code.
For real though, has any sort of movement or organization tried to alleviate these problems without financial motivation?
I'm actually contemplating ICQ, it's still around and looks no worse than any other service. Matrix might be a better solution though, it's federated and open. https://matrix.org/blog/home/
ICQ, AIM, MSN Messenger, PawWaw, Yahoo Messenger, Odigo, (and 30 more names I can't remeber) - there was a huge instant messaging war, the first stage of which was decidedly won by AOL (with AIM and the purchase of ICQ), but Microsoft later made great headway through sheer monopoly force and persistence - but that eventually became irrelevant with SMS taking over as the main form of instant messaging and then WhatsApp taking the world by storm.
None of this was open source. Not a single one of the successful messengers. In fact, AOL fought alternative clients fiercely all the time, and Microsoft started fighting them as soon as they got non-trivial market share.
What about XMPP (Which started life as Jabber before being standardized?)? Well, that one is open source. But it only survived and flourished because all the commercial outfits were busy fighting each other.
I was tangentially involved with the failed instant messaging standardization process at the turn of the millennium, and Jabber was by far the worst technical proposal at the time -- but the process was political, and when the committee disbanded due to all the political infighting, Jabber, which didn't have the commercial interests, was the remaining option.
I think that iMessage network effect is a big reason for the steady market share growth of iPhone in the US- none of the competitive apps have cross-generational appeal, just iMessage.