FreeGameDev

People either like Pidgin (=are used to it) or hate it. I personally have used it for quite some time back in the ICQ days, but regardless of that, PLEASE if you ever intend to use XMPP, don't use Pidgin. The XMPP support in Pidgin is like a decade behind of what other clients support, and it is holding back the entire XMPP federation
If you want something that is quite similar to Pidgin but actually supports XMPP, use Gajim... pleeeaaaase

What about SIP? I want to hear your sweet voice.

Julius {l Wrote}:People either like Pidgin (=are used to it) or hate it. I personally have used it for quite some time back in the ICQ days, but regardless of that, PLEASE if you ever intend to use XMPP, don't use Pidgin. The XMPP support in Pidgin is like a decade behind of what other clients support, and it is holding back the entire XMPP federation
If you want something that is quite similar to Pidgin but actually supports XMPP, use Gajim... pleeeaaaase

What features does Pidgin not have?

fluffrabbit {l Wrote}:What about SIP? I want to hear your sweet voice.

WebRTC is the current standard to aim for... but there are some SIP bridges for it I think.

Lyberta {l Wrote}:
What features does Pidgin not have?

Nearly everything. People install Pidgin and think that XMPP hasn't evolved since 15 years. Modern multi device end 2 end encryption is also only semi supported through a 3rd party plugin that is hard to get to work.

A partially complete list of minimum standards for a modern XMPP client can be found here:
https://docs.modernxmpp.org/client/protocol/

Julius {l Wrote}:Modern multi device end 2 end encryption is also only semi supported through a 3rd party plugin that is hard to get to work.

Uhh, I just have a separate account for every device, use OTR and don't keep any history. Seems to be the most secure way.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but WebRTC and WebSockets are lower-level protocols than SIP. You want a protocol that provides text and A/V chat in the spec. Right, or am I missing something? Also, what about infrastructure concerns with running videophone software on a low-powered IoT device? Wouldn't the web stuff incur a complexity and performance overhead before you even get to the level of a chat interface?

fluffrabbit {l Wrote}:Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but WebRTC and WebSockets are lower-level protocols than SIP. You want a protocol that provides text and A/V chat in the spec. Right, or am I missing something? Also, what about infrastructure concerns with running videophone software on a low-powered IoT device? Wouldn't the web stuff incur a complexity and performance overhead before you even get to the level of a chat interface?

Yeah, not really something for dumb-phones. But there is cool stuff like this for interoperability of webRTC, SIP and even XMPP Jingle: https://github.com/AGProjects/sylkserver

Not what I'm talking about. Case/point: What's your WebRTC number?

ok I get your point now... but why have a dedicated SIP number when you can establish WebRTC based video/audio conferencing over more less what ever communication channel of your preference?

More on topic: came across this interesting IRC server https://github.com/oragono/oragono
If I would have been aware of it earlier, I might have stuck to the previous The Lounge IRC web client solution... hmm :-/
Edit: uhh, they are even working on IRC federation: https://github.com/oragono/oragono/issues/26 NICE


Edit: Split off topic discussion to here: https://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic ... 46&t=12204

I am starting to get a bit annoyed by Mattermost's team edition (the open-source version) artificial limitations

And the above IRC option looks really tempting (especially also since integration with XMPP, Mumble & Bitlebee is much easier)... bridging to Freenode IRC and Discord will be unaffected of course (as Matterbridge is completely independent of Mattermost), but if this turns out of be suitable, I might disable Mattermost again in the medium term. Just to warn people to not get too attached to it

I also like that with Oragono IRC we can make accounts optional and run The Lounge IRC web-client in public mode easily.

Mattermost should work again. Permanently disabled due to open-core non-features. Seems like there might be a Nextcloud like community driven fork up-coming, so it that gets traction it will be reconsidered.

Not sure if I mentioned this before, but beside Movim I am also looking into this as an option for the XMPP side of things:
https://salut-a-toi.org/
Feature wise quite interesting, but GUI isn't great (but works without JavaScript apparently) and Python might be too heavy for my puny server. Definilty waiting for the Python3 port...

You can now beta-test the XMPP server:
https://portal.freegamedev.net/xmpp/
Edit: check your Spam folder for the activation email after registering.

Beta test our own Movim instance:
https://movim.freegamedev.net/
Edit: disabled for now

OMEMO?

Ah, those are the old messages we send with the conversejs client (https://converse.freegamedev.net). Sadly Movim does not yet support end2end encryption using the OMEMO standard.

Disabled the Movim instance again. It works, with some minor issues with my Docker image. But after testing it, I have to say the advantages of it don't outweigh the disadvantages compared to ConverseJS. It's relatively heavy on server resources (with a single user about 150MB RAM and regular CPU spikes up to 40% when joining new channels), and lot of the nice additional functionality doesn't work across other XMPP clients or the IRC bridge.

Instead I started to tweak the https://converse.freegamedev.net again a bit more. It will now work over websockets and has a few other behind the scenes improvements. Still only works with a account from the same server, but you can now sign up here:
https://portal.freegamedev.net/xmpp/

I am moving to a XMPP only system (with IRC gateway to Freenode), as there I got everything working nicely and I due to all the issues I had getting an IRC server to run on my server I kind of lost motivation to try it further.

Main focus will be on optimizing the use of the existing and nicely working https://converse.freegamedev.net (register an XMPP account at https://portal.freegamedev.net/xmpp ), but of course you can use any XMPP client.

Another cool option I just found is this: https://github.com/nioc/xmpp-web (ConverseJS is an aging project that is probably a bit over engineered and thus a more lightweight option would be nicer).

Updated https://converse.freegamedev.net/ to ConverseJS 6.0.

Full config here: https://github.com/poVoq/FreeGameDevChat

Still working on XEP-0156 support, but if you use a XMPP server with 100% compliance that has with the correct meta info it should soon be possible to log into our webchat without a xmpp.freegamedev.net JID.

I recently realized that Gitter chats can be viewed without logging in. I personally hate joining discussions blind which has kept me away from IRC and the like. Just something to add to the to-evaluate list if you ever do a second round.

Huitsi {l Wrote}:I recently realized that Gitter chats can be viewed without logging in. I personally hate joining discussions blind which has kept me away from IRC and the like. Just something to add to the to-evaluate list if you ever do a second round.

This was definitely my biggest frustration with most Matrix implementations, you need to go through an arduous registration to see what's even going on. On IRC I'm used to it but I shouldn't be (and actually a lot of projects would host public logs right on their main site in part for that reason). Proprietary platforms like Slack suffer from the same.

So being able to see what's going on without a sign up is a huge competitive advantage in my book.

Hmm, that is sort of supported by ConverseJS/XMPP as well and can also quite easily set up with IRC webclients.

The problem with ConverseJS seems though that you would also need to enable anonymous logins (spam problem) I think, but I need to test that.