Although we did lose one contributor due to some extenuating circumstances. They had moved to the USA on an H-1B visa and the company they were working for decided that they didn’t like the legal gray area that some of our protocol code created. This meant that the contributor could no longer contribute and they found something else to do with their free time. Because of this, we instituted a new policy where only Open Source/open specification protocols are allowed in our main code repository.
I remember using Pidgin back in the early 2010s as a Linux AIM client. At the time, none of the other chat protocols it supported were ones in use by anyone I talked to, and as AIM shut down and the people in my social circles migrated to Facebook messenger and then Signal/Slack/Discord, I stopped using it.
Honestly, Pidgin is something I think of as legacy software from a contemporary context; and the fact that it’s hosted on Sourceforge and supports “Jabber/XMPP, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, and Zephyr. It can support many more with plugins.” is not helping a whole lot to change that perception - I haven’t heard of most of those protocols and the protocols I use are not on the list.
That said, a single program that can handle arbitrary chat protocols is in fact a useful piece of (free) software to exist, particularly if it can handle the modern, usually-proprietary chat protocols that people I talk to actually use. In particular it would be really useful if it could handle multiple Discord and Matrix accounts (and also work on mobile devices). I’m not sure if Pidgin, even in this new release, can necessarily handle these desiderata; but I’m down to give the new release a shot.
That said, we only use source forge for file hosting. Something we’re looking to get away from but haven’t yet.
Also most of the answers to your concerns are answered in the post that this links to. But to be clear, this is a very very raw release so it’s not going to have much of any of that quite yet.
That said, a single program that can handle arbitrary chat protocols is in fact a useful piece of (free) software to exist, particularly if it can handle the modern, usually-proprietary chat protocols that people I talk to actually use.
Sans the free/libre part, beeper developers certainly hope so!
Great job! I’m moderately excited about libpurple being introspectable. I’ll be more excited about it when there are Matrix and modern XMPP protocols implemented, but honestly the code improvements are a big deal.
Just an update that we missed some bugs that were affecting new users so we’ve released 2.90.1 which fixes them. The linked posted has been updated with this information as well.
This brings me memories. /archive/_purple/logs on ny Nextcloud contains so many conversations from a certain age (I just took a random look, found ICQ logs from 2004 quickly).
I’m hopeful that in 2025 the DMA will allow me to use a non-Meta client for WhatsApp… I don’t think I’ll keep logs like a did in the past, but perhaps… that client could be Finch if it comes back, or maybe a libpurple-based terminal client or bridge to IRC or whatever. Pidgin is truly one of the pieces of software that has had more influence on my life.
Hah, no worries, that is awesome, but I think I’ve kinda made the “decision” to not log my conversations anymore. And the old conversations are plain text, so I kinda can read them whenever I want.
About WhatsApp, I’m waiting for the DMA. I don’t think Meta is going to be awful with the DMA going on, but they’re still free to ban people using non-official clients. And in my neck of the woods, getting your WhatsApp account banned is a HUGE pain, so I’ll wait until I can interop with them “legally”.
(But in any case, congrats for restarting Pidgin. Perhaps it will go back to its former glory!)
I’d hope so as well, what I was going for is that meta is still free to choose whom to offer their services to, except for some anti-discrimination laws which often are rather hard to enforce as an affected individual.
Did the digital markets act change anything in that regard? I honestly don’t know but would be happy to learn about it, if so!
There’s plenty to read online, but the DMA basically forces “gatekeepers” to offer other entities ways to interoperate, amongst other things.
Some effects of the DMA are already here, but WhatsApp is like… one year late? My understanding is that, for example, Signal can ask Meta to give them means to federate Signal and WhatsApp, and Meta must comply within reason without funky business (e.g. YMMV, but not making interop opt-in).
I do not know well the exact definition of gatekeeping and the measures in the DMA, but in my neck of the woods, not using WhatsApp is painful- I cannot really not have an account; my landlord and the building manager prefer WhatsApp for communication, and even some companies prioritize WhatsApp communications. Although you have some degree of choice and you could avoid companies that do customer service through WhatsApp, for instance choosing a rental to live in is complex enough already.
Don’t have too much hope the DMA will solve this. Federation with the big services was already a poor experience when they were playing nice (i.e. FB/GTalk XMPP) and the services were all similar enough without much divergence.
I’m wondering why there is no 3rd party or official Webex protocol support, REST API is pretty open (https://developer.webex.com/docs/getting-started) and there should be no problem to fetch and post messages.
Because the core team is busy with other stuff and no one else has stepped in to do it? This is all volunteer work, and we (the core team) are also less likely to develop support for a protocol we don’t actively use.
This made me have to check if anyone knows if the long unfixed otr implementation ever got fixed even if it did long before this release. Totally forgot to keep track of it
otr has been abandoned by upstream for a very long time so the chance of it getting fixed in pidgin2 is unlikely and as such it probably won’t be appearing in pidgin3.
Good to know. Assumed as such, just wanted to make sure before seeing another use pidgin with OTR as a suggestion still! for how to securely chat guides that never seem to have any notes about it nearly a decade later on false privacy initiative driving crud sites
We’re live on Flathub Beta now!! Flathub Beta means it won’t show up on the site, but it’ll show up in GNOME Software and other app stores after you add the Flathub Beta remote. You can find instructions on how to do so here https://discourse.imfreedom.org/t/pidgin-3-on-flathub-beta/230
wtf
Which part are you “wtf”’n?
Congratulations, grim: I know that this has been a long hard road for you. Thank you for your work.
Thanks, this means a lot to me! :)
I remember using Pidgin back in the early 2010s as a Linux AIM client. At the time, none of the other chat protocols it supported were ones in use by anyone I talked to, and as AIM shut down and the people in my social circles migrated to Facebook messenger and then Signal/Slack/Discord, I stopped using it.
Honestly, Pidgin is something I think of as legacy software from a contemporary context; and the fact that it’s hosted on Sourceforge and supports “Jabber/XMPP, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, and Zephyr. It can support many more with plugins.” is not helping a whole lot to change that perception - I haven’t heard of most of those protocols and the protocols I use are not on the list.
That said, a single program that can handle arbitrary chat protocols is in fact a useful piece of (free) software to exist, particularly if it can handle the modern, usually-proprietary chat protocols that people I talk to actually use. In particular it would be really useful if it could handle multiple Discord and Matrix accounts (and also work on mobile devices). I’m not sure if Pidgin, even in this new release, can necessarily handle these desiderata; but I’m down to give the new release a shot.
I’m glad you enjoyed pidgin.
That said, we only use source forge for file hosting. Something we’re looking to get away from but haven’t yet.
Also most of the answers to your concerns are answered in the post that this links to. But to be clear, this is a very very raw release so it’s not going to have much of any of that quite yet.
Sans the free/libre part, beeper developers certainly hope so!
https://beeper.com
https://www.beeper.com/faq#self-host-beeper
Beeper is mostly open source, I believe. It’s Matrix + couple of plugins. My brother uses it and he’s very happy, so I guess it’s at least decent.
Back-end is mostly foss, app/clients are closed.
Great job! I’m moderately excited about libpurple being introspectable. I’ll be more excited about it when there are Matrix and modern XMPP protocols implemented, but honestly the code improvements are a big deal.
Yeah I’m excited to get those done too. It’ll be sooner rather than later, but still going to be a bit.
Wow, very cool! That’s been a huge project. Great work, thank you!
Just an update that we missed some bugs that were affecting new users so we’ve released 2.90.1 which fixes them. The linked posted has been updated with this information as well.
This brings me memories.
/archive/_purple/logson ny Nextcloud contains so many conversations from a certain age (I just took a random look, found ICQ logs from 2004 quickly).I’m hopeful that in 2025 the DMA will allow me to use a non-Meta client for WhatsApp… I don’t think I’ll keep logs like a did in the past, but perhaps… that client could be Finch if it comes back, or maybe a libpurple-based terminal client or bridge to IRC or whatever. Pidgin is truly one of the pieces of software that has had more influence on my life.
part of the plan for the aforementioned command line tool for history is to import old logs.
Also there is a whatsapp plugin for pidgin2 already https://github.com/hoehermann/purple-gowhatsapp/
Many more third party protocol plugins can be found at https://pidgin.im/plugins
Hah, no worries, that is awesome, but I think I’ve kinda made the “decision” to not log my conversations anymore. And the old conversations are plain text, so I kinda can read them whenever I want.
About WhatsApp, I’m waiting for the DMA. I don’t think Meta is going to be awful with the DMA going on, but they’re still free to ban people using non-official clients. And in my neck of the woods, getting your WhatsApp account banned is a HUGE pain, so I’ll wait until I can interop with them “legally”.
(But in any case, congrats for restarting Pidgin. Perhaps it will go back to its former glory!)
My impression was that meta is free to ban you basically whenever they feel like it?
Hopefully, with the DMA, they will not ban people interoperating from different services!
I’d hope so as well, what I was going for is that meta is still free to choose whom to offer their services to, except for some anti-discrimination laws which often are rather hard to enforce as an affected individual.
Did the digital markets act change anything in that regard? I honestly don’t know but would be happy to learn about it, if so!
There’s plenty to read online, but the DMA basically forces “gatekeepers” to offer other entities ways to interoperate, amongst other things.
Some effects of the DMA are already here, but WhatsApp is like… one year late? My understanding is that, for example, Signal can ask Meta to give them means to federate Signal and WhatsApp, and Meta must comply within reason without funky business (e.g. YMMV, but not making interop opt-in).
I do not know well the exact definition of gatekeeping and the measures in the DMA, but in my neck of the woods, not using WhatsApp is painful- I cannot really not have an account; my landlord and the building manager prefer WhatsApp for communication, and even some companies prioritize WhatsApp communications. Although you have some degree of choice and you could avoid companies that do customer service through WhatsApp, for instance choosing a rental to live in is complex enough already.
Don’t have too much hope the DMA will solve this. Federation with the big services was already a poor experience when they were playing nice (i.e. FB/GTalk XMPP) and the services were all similar enough without much divergence.
I’m wondering why there is no 3rd party or official Webex protocol support, REST API is pretty open (https://developer.webex.com/docs/getting-started) and there should be no problem to fetch and post messages.
Because the core team is busy with other stuff and no one else has stepped in to do it? This is all volunteer work, and we (the core team) are also less likely to develop support for a protocol we don’t actively use.
Great job, another longstanding gtk based app (gimp being the other) thats getting a nice modern tech update.
Thanks for all the hard work.
This made me have to check if anyone knows if the long unfixed otr implementation ever got fixed even if it did long before this release. Totally forgot to keep track of it
otr has been abandoned by upstream for a very long time so the chance of it getting fixed in pidgin2 is unlikely and as such it probably won’t be appearing in pidgin3.
Good to know. Assumed as such, just wanted to make sure before seeing another use pidgin with OTR as a suggestion still! for how to securely chat guides that never seem to have any notes about it nearly a decade later on false privacy initiative driving crud sites
Yeah, we’re planning on getting everything built in, but it’s going to be awhile yet..
All good just purely was curious about ye ol OTR issue unrelated to new updates as had been awhile since seeing the name pidgin around. Good luck
Great work and I’m happy to see
gaimPidgin continues to be developed.Sad face
[Comment removed by author]
We’re live on Flathub Beta now!! Flathub Beta means it won’t show up on the site, but it’ll show up in GNOME Software and other app stores after you add the Flathub Beta remote. You can find instructions on how to do so here https://discourse.imfreedom.org/t/pidgin-3-on-flathub-beta/230