keverets

For the US and Canada, there is JMP.chat which can be used to 2FA over SMS without a SIM. Uses standard XMPP so can be used from a computer or phone while on WiFi.

There are other proprietary services which can do the same for no monetary cost (usually lots of advertising and tracking, though).

You might want to check out jmp.chat ... it does SMS via XMPP and can place phone calls via SIP all on a fully free-software stack that you could modify and use independently if desired.

I use Evolution every day with the evolution-ews plugin for accessing an Exchange server. It's still a bit clunky as it always was, and has some issues when switching between wired/wireless networks, but otherwise works fine for email, calendar, and contacts.

Even better is Gadgetbridge (available on F-droid): https://github.com/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge

It's not as slick as the official app, but requires much less in the way of permissions and is more flexible.

I think both have a place in the world (as another comment pointed out, similar to NNTP vs SMTP). Does it really need to be an "us vs them" eat each other's lunch kind of a deal to you?

I use both. Conversations works well out-of-the-box on Android. I use Vector on my desktop, Matrix Console Android, and Vector Android, but none of them work very smoothly. I'm hopeful they will improve as time goes on as I tend to use XMPP more since I have more personal contacts that I can communicate with via that protocol, but I also like and use Matrix.

You don't seem to be aware, but there was an XMPP<->IRC bridge long before Matrix existed. It was about as satisfying as the Matrix version, though that's still improving.

I'm running my own matrix server (synapse), and my own XMPP server (ejabberd), and honestly ejabberd was easier to get off the ground. Again, I'm hopeful that synapse will improve with time, but I really think there's room for both to exist since they do have slightly different use cases.

I still use XMPP to connect to google talk and converse with people who are using hangouts. I use "Conversations" on Android, which works well and also supports OMEMO (the XMPP version of the encryption behind Signal/Whatsapp/etc). I'm effectively doing the equivalent of your facebook+xmpp+otr setup today, but it's googlechat+xmpp+omemo.

The author of Conversations recently wrote up the state of XMPP in 2016: https://gultsch.de/xmpp_2016.html

So, though you may not be using it anymore, XMPP is far from a dead end.

It would be good if the library was marked as Libre so that LibreJS would easily recognize it: https://www.gnu.org/software/librejs/manual/html_node/Free-L...

Jitsi (jitsi.org) does video calling over Jabber and others.

Though it's not web based like imo.im, you also don't have to give your access credentials to a third party.

Is source code available? I couldn't find a link. Without the source, claims of privacy and security are very suspect.

You appear to be speaking from a purely consumer perspective. That's being only the client in a client/server relationship, and feeling a need for protection from the supplier.

I'm speaking from being a peer; both a consumer and a supplier at the same time. We are more than consumers, we're people and citizens that provide services and utilize services of others. Having a third party in those transactions that can arbitrarily disrupt them has proven problematic (for reference, see all of the backlash against PayPal for the way they arbitrarily freeze funds on both sides, etc).

That's a fair point. The difference is in where I think the trust should be placed.

I would love to be able to pay for goods on Amazon with bitcoin, because I trust Amazon. Right now Mastercard/Visa/Paypal takes a cut on each of those transactions to provide "trust" in them that I neither need nor want. If things go wrong in that transaction, I'm still left dealing with Amazon, as Mastercard/Visa/Paypal will not want to get involved.

In cases where you're dealing with an unknown quantity, then you have to look elsewhere for your trust metric. eBay has their, eg. "99% positive" reviews, Silk Road has their own way of dealing with this (similar with freebies/samples to build trust).

The trust issue he encountered he mis-attributed to bitcoin when in fact the issue was with paypal and credit cards. Bitcoin is like cash. There's no "reversal" of charges. Once something has been paid for, it's public record and there's no one-sided taking it back. This is a good thing.

The use of Paypal and credit cards destroy this trust by allowing a paying party to reverse transactions so the payee gets nothing. It's empowering a third party to arbitrarily negate charges.

Bitcoin is no more a "den of thieves" than a cash-based society, which most of the world was until recently. I'd argue that Credit Cards and PayPal are much more a den of thieves by abusing their trust to cause no end of issues for people receiving payments.