> So good. Thanks Mr. Gultsch[0] !

It's interesting to look back at the role Mr. Gultsch played in this XMPP revival. He correctly identified features missing or present in other messengers (e.g. offline files or good mobile connectivity), wrote appropriate specs (e.g. [0]) and made sure they went through XSF, implemented them in his client, helped implement it in other clients and implemented some of them in servers, or procured server developers to do so. Then he made sure that server administrators have an easy way to check compliance that ultimately led to SSLLabs-like online checker [1] that was a GSOC project that he also mentored.

Quicksy was conceived to test if the idea of phone number-based contact discovery would bring more people to XMPP. He's not just talking about stuff, he's actually implementing his ideas to check if they work!

This proactive approach is something that truly amazes me, especially when the default response of many people is cynicism and ranting that "the world is bad".

I don't want to downplay role of other people here but I'm 100% sure if it wasn't for Daniel's involvement we wouldn't be talking about XMPP today.

[0]: https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0363.html

[1]: https://compliance.conversations.im/

While I understand the concerns and I appreciate all of what Conversations' author is doing for the community, other clients have also seen significant improvements lately.

Gajim[0] has practically come back from the "dead". There is a huge difference, UI/UX-wise but not just, between pre and post 1.0, (1.1 at the time of writing, 1.2 coming).

There is also dino[1], a nice and simple desktop client, and converse.js[2], a fast-developing web-client.

Movim[3] and Salut-à-Toi[4] are also putting in a lot of work on the social network side.

[0]: https://gajim.org

[1]: https://dino.im

[2]: https://conversejs.org

[3]: https://movim.eu

[4]: https://salut-a-toi.org

Edit: Added conversejs

I still prefer pidgin, but it needs a lot of love to make it a reasonably modern XMPP client:

- https://github.com/danielkraic/Pidgin-XEP-0136-plugin adds XEP-0136 (needs "mam_archive" on prosody)

- https://github.com/gkdr/carbons adds XEP-0280 (Carbons)

- https://github.com/Junker/purple-xmpp-http-upload adds XEP-363 (HTTP uploads)

- https://github.com/gkdr/lurch adds XEP-0384 (OMEMO)

- https://github.com/noonien-d/pidgin-xmpp-receipts XEP-0184 (message delivery receipts)

The real pain for Pidgin is the complete lack of XEP-313 due to Pidgin's aged logging system, and I would really like to see a working message sync for Pidgin :(

EDIT: https://github.com/CkNoSFeRaTU/pidgin apparently has had XEP-313 patched into Pidgin for years now. Combined with lurch and Carbons, message sync is working fine.

I wish Pidgin would just disappear. It is absolutely unusable without all these plugins in a modern multi client world, and most users don't know they need them.

The delivery receipts issue is a decade old [0]! Libpurple is a mess to implement all the modern features, because it tries to support the baseline of so many different protocols.

[0] https://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/6940

I wish it would reborn, that I agree on. Disappear - no. Please no. I still need to connect to 3-4 systems, and the last thing I want is 3-4 messengers, especially if all of them are webapps. Pidgin is still the only thing standing between me and total messenger madness.

For sure! I use gajim as my main Desktop client.

And thanks for the link to salut-a-toi, I hadn't heard of it.