Free software is definitely going strong in some areas, especially in the server market. However, there are other areas where free software and free protocols have failed. Internet based voice and video communication is one of those areas. The market is basically fully owned by Skype, a piece of proprietary software based on a proprietary (and abusive) protocol in the hands the same company that runs eBay. Free software advocates have been saying "what if Skype was discontinued?" for years. Then I read about eBay considering shutting Skype down. Pardon?
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Ferk
15 years 10 weeks 1 day 11 hours ago
XMPP for the win
XMPP Jingle p2p communication is far better than SIP and perhaps even better than Skype.
Empathy and now Psi (which also works in Windows) could be nice replacements for Skype.
I think that this should be the logical choice. Also, XMPP is also bound to many other free services not related to voice/video that I think would really benefit from the triumph of Jingle.
Mr. Psychopath
15 years 9 weeks 2 days 21 hours ago
Re: XMPP for the Win
Totally agree with you on this. For the last few years, I had a jumble of contacts across many different messenger protocols, as well as contacts on Skype. Hopefully, with the upcoming stuff being doing with Jingle developers will be able to implement the protocols across the many various Free Software instant messengers out there.
My biggest gripe with the most popular ones (Pidgin, Kopete, Empathy perhaps) is that they don't fully implement XMPP as much as I'd like. File transfer from Gajim to Kopete or Pidgin to Gajim doesn't always work, and it's that lack that I think is holding back XMPP/Jabber. I'd really like to see developers use a more robust XMPP library that is up-to-date with the latest features.