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

[Martin Klapetek]

2011/12/11 Niels Ole Salscheider <niels_ole at salscheider-online.de>

> 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?
>


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.

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 :)

--
Martin Klapetek | KDE Developer



>
> Regards,
>
> Ole
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>
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