<div>2011/12/11 Niels Ole Salscheider <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:niels_ole@salscheider-online.de">niels_ole@salscheider-online.de</a>></span></div><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
CC'ing <a href="mailto:kde-telepathy@kde.org">kde-telepathy@kde.org</a><br>
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<br>
Hello,<br>
<br>
while it is "cool" from a technical point of view to see some efforts to<br>
integrate Facebook & Co. into KDE SC, I think that we, as a community around<br>
free software, should try to integrate a social network built around open<br>
standards, too.<br>
<br>
Given the recent move of discussions to Google+ in the open source community,<br>
there seems to be a demand for social networks (even though I am happy with<br>
mailing lists, blogs and IRC). But after all, Google+ is not much better than<br>
Facebook: Google might be friendlier towards the open source world but it is a<br>
closed network built around proprietary technologies after all.<br>
<br>
Unfortunately, there are not any good alternatives. While there are many small<br>
projects trying to solve this issue, none of these is big enough to gain<br>
momentum and become a real competitor to Facebook & Co.<br>
<br>
Because of that, I want to propose to push for a social network based on XMPP<br>
(maybe reusing the efforts done by OneSocialWeb) and integrate it well into KDE<br>
SC (really well, not just the obvious stuff). The reason why it should use XMPP<br>
is that there are already many mail providers offering XMPP based chat services<br>
and I bet that these providers would like to offer social network extensions,<br>
too, if there was an easy way. Each provider alone does not have a big market<br>
share; but considering that about half of my friends that are not open source<br>
related use an email provider that offers XMPP (GMX, <a href="http://web.de" target="_blank">web.de</a>, 1&1, Google Mail,<br>
...), the complete network could have enough members to gain momentum.<br>
<br>
Of course, this will not happen if we do not work together with other<br>
projects: We need to get together with the OneSocialWeb team so that they<br>
finish their XEPs (maybe even help them and make suggestions how to improve the<br>
drafts). We also need the important XMPP servers (ejabberd, ...) to support it<br>
and to find a project that wants to improve the web interface OSW started to<br>
implement. Meanwhile we should implement the draft in KDE SC, too (this might<br>
actually be an unique selling point for both, KDE SC (5) and XMPP/OSW).<br>
<br>
I know there might be reservation to put effort into such a project until the<br>
standards are finished and there are enough users. But if we do not show<br>
commitment and work simultaneously on this, each project will just wait for<br>
the others to take a step and nothing will ever happen.<br>
I cannot promise that this will work out but I think that it is our only<br>
chance to build a real alternative to the closed social networks. And I am<br>
confident that we could win quite an amount of users, at least in the open<br>
source community and from the mail providers already offering XMPP.<br>
<br>
What do you think?<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div>The idea itself sounds pretty interesting and imho worth doing. Seeing how the n9 deals with social stuff, I'm quite sad that KDE has nothing like that.</div>
<div><br></div><div>But I think that I can safely say that the KDE Telepathy team is seriously shorthanded and we have lots and lots of our own stuff still ahead of us and only bunch of people around. But if you can make this happen, (ie. get people) we (KDE-Tp) will happily assist :)</div>
<div><br></div><div>--</div><div><font color="#666666">Martin Klapetek | KDE Developer</font></div></div><div><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<br>
Regards,<br>
<br>
Ole<br>_______________________________________________<br>
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