[Kde-pim] Integrate an open social network into KDE SC

[Ingo Klöcker]

On Sunday 11 December 2011, Niels Ole Salscheider wrote:
> CC'ing kde-telepathy at kde.org
> --------------------------------------------------
> 
> Hello,
> 
> while it is "cool" from a technical point of view to see some efforts
> to integrate Facebook & Co. into KDE SC, I think that we, as a
> community around free software, should try to integrate a social
> network built around open standards, too.
> 
> Given the recent move of discussions to Google+ in the open source
> community, there seems to be a demand for social networks (even
> though I am happy with mailing lists, blogs and IRC). But after all,
> Google+ is not much better than Facebook: Google might be friendlier
> towards the open source world but it is a closed network built
> around proprietary technologies after all.
> 
> Unfortunately, there are not any good alternatives. While there are
> many small projects trying to solve this issue, none of these is big
> enough to gain momentum and become a real competitor to Facebook &
> Co.
> 
> Because of that, I want to propose to push for a social network based
> on XMPP (maybe reusing the efforts done by OneSocialWeb) and
> integrate it well into KDE SC (really well, not just the obvious
> stuff). The reason why it should use XMPP is that there are already
> many mail providers offering XMPP based chat services and I bet that
> these providers would like to offer social network extensions, too,
> if there was an easy way. Each provider alone does not have a big
> market share; but considering that about half of my friends that are
> not open source related use an email provider that offers XMPP (GMX,
> web.de, 1&1, Google Mail, ...), the complete network could have
> enough members to gain momentum.
> 
> Of course, this will not happen if we do not work together with other
> projects: We need to get together with the OneSocialWeb team so that
> they finish their XEPs (maybe even help them and make suggestions
> how to improve the drafts). We also need the important XMPP servers
> (ejabberd, ...) to support it and to find a project that wants to
> improve the web interface OSW started to implement. Meanwhile we
> should implement the draft in KDE SC, too (this might actually be an
> unique selling point for both, KDE SC (5) and XMPP/OSW).
> 
> I know there might be reservation to put effort into such a project
> until the standards are finished and there are enough users. But if
> we do not show commitment and work simultaneously on this, each
> project will just wait for the others to take a step and nothing
> will ever happen.
> I cannot promise that this will work out but I think that it is our
> only chance to build a real alternative to the closed social
> networks. And I am confident that we could win quite an amount of
> users, at least in the open source community and from the mail
> providers already offering XMPP.
> 
> What do you think?

I really don't want to discourage you, but why don't you simply get your 
hands dirty and start hacking on what you are talking about and then 
come back to us when you do actually have something to show. Making big 
plans is not really how Free Software works most of the time. "Have a 
look at what I did ..." often works. "Let's do ..." almost never works.

Note that in KDE "We should ..." is always understood as "I will ...". 
Nowhere in your long message you say "I will ...". If you are not 
willing to invest a large amount of your time in this project then you 
can stop right here.


Regards,
Ingo
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