The chat situation

[Bernie Innocenti]

On 11/06/2020 18.32, Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> I am still using IRC. Last time I tried to register for Matrix it put up
> some Google Recaptcha and is where I lost my interest already.

You might have missed it, but identity.kde.org also uses reCAPTCHA :-)

And how else would they keep spammers under control? Other hosted chats 
ask for your email address or even your phone number...


> But aside from that, I believe part of the thing is:
> 
> I am not using *any* chat client from KDE at the moment. Why?
> 
> There are not up to par with what would be needed:
> 
> Kopete currently is not even in Debian unstable… and last it was, it
> wasn't working all that well. And no OMEMO with XMPP either. Also it
> claims to support many more chat protocols than make sense.
> 
> KDE Telepathy appears to be abandoned completely.
> 
> Even Konversation does not seem to receive a lot of attention, or am I
> missing something? It however still appears to be quite usable.
> 
> But I am using Quassel IRC anyway…

I'm using Quassel too and it's great... if you have your own server!

Most users don't. And anyway, running a bouncer or quassel-core adds a 
layer of complexity on top of an ancient protocol with weak identity and 
persistence model.

Long-time IRC users like you have already paid the cost of learning and 
setting up this pile of hacks long ago. But we should be conscious that 
it's highly unreasonable for new users.

Also, the Visual Design Group is asking for a chat protocol that can 
share images and videos. This is not even close to ever happen on IRC in 
a way that interoperates across clients.

This is why I think we should give up on IRC and just migrate to Matrix, 
Gitter, or maybe Telegram (since it's already being used by the 
designers and seems to be their preferred choice).

Bridging networks might *seem* like it would give everyone their 
favorite choice, but in practice it results in poor UX and serious 
communication issues (as Nate already noted).


> Kaidan.im – I hope it will get there, without OMEMO no option for me.
> 
> I think this could be one of the next community goals after the
> currently running 3 years period… fix up the chat software situation in
> KDE. However for now that won't help.
> 
> So for now there may be the option to find a suitable combination of
> *some* chat client, even outside of KDE project, with chat server that
> satisfies people.
> 
> I'd keep IRC however until there would be something that could convince
> all those IRC users to switch over.
> 
> Thanks,

-- 
_ // Bernie Innocenti
  \X/  https://codewiz.org/