Hi, Empathy, which is our default IM client, has been dead upstream for some time, so I'd like to start a discussion about what instant messaging experience should look like in Fedora Workstation.
I've already written two blog posts about it. The goal of the first one was to describe the situation and collect input from users: https://eischmann.wordpress.com/2015/04/19/instant-messaging-in-fedora-works...
The second one already works with user feedback from two surveys: https://eischmann.wordpress.com/2015/04/24/instant-messaging-in-fedora-works...
It pretty much comes down to a question if we want to build a well integrated multi-protocol client (continuing with Empathy/Pidgin, or starting GNOME Chat) or if we should give it up and embrace all those popular, unfortunately mostly closed services (Skype, Messenger, Hangouts, Telegram...) and make them as integrated in the desktop as possible. The latter would probably clash a bit with one of our 4 foundation - freedom.
Jiri
My humble opinion:
I work a bit with journalists and secure communications protocols are a hard requirement for many of them. So I would support everything Tails (https://tails.boum.org/) supports. In other words, OTR is a hard requirement.
That said, rather than try and re-engineer Fedora Workstation I'd make a text-based Docker image with all of the outstanding command-line messaging tools in Fedora - for example, irssi, bitlbee and maybe text email clients. I think I know the packages that need to be in it - if anyone's interested I'll post a Dockerfile on https://hub.docker.com/.
On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 9:55 AM, Jiri Eischmann eischmann@redhat.com wrote:
Hi, Empathy, which is our default IM client, has been dead upstream for some time, so I'd like to start a discussion about what instant messaging experience should look like in Fedora Workstation.
I've already written two blog posts about it. The goal of the first one was to describe the situation and collect input from users: https://eischmann.wordpress.com/2015/04/19/instant-messaging-in-fedora-works...
The second one already works with user feedback from two surveys: https://eischmann.wordpress.com/2015/04/24/instant-messaging-in-fedora-works...
It pretty much comes down to a question if we want to build a well integrated multi-protocol client (continuing with Empathy/Pidgin, or starting GNOME Chat) or if we should give it up and embrace all those popular, unfortunately mostly closed services (Skype, Messenger, Hangouts, Telegram...) and make them as integrated in the desktop as possible. The latter would probably clash a bit with one of our 4 foundation - freedom.
Jiri
-- desktop mailing list desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
Empathy, which is our default IM client, has been dead upstream for some time, so I'd like to start a discussion about what instant messaging experience should look like in Fedora Workstation.
This will largely be determined by whatever decisions are made upstream in the GNOME project. (Chat is integrated into several key GNOME modules - such as the shell and the control center - so it's not simply a matter of switching packages around.)
That said, I'm sure that the GNOME release team would welcome input on the subject. (They have discussed this subject recently themselves.)
Allan
Allan Day píše v Pá 24. 04. 2015 v 18:33 +0100:
Empathy, which is our default IM client, has been dead upstream for some time, so I'd like to start a discussion about what instant messaging experience should look like in Fedora Workstation.
This will largely be determined by whatever decisions are made upstream in the GNOME project. (Chat is integrated into several key GNOME modules - such as the shell and the control center - so it's not simply a matter of switching packages around.)
That said, I'm sure that the GNOME release team would welcome input on the subject. (They have discussed this subject recently themselves.)
Sure, but one of the most important ideas behind Fedora Workstation is not to wait for whatever upstream comes up with, package it and ship it to users, but to communicate with upstream, participate there, and bring the best experience to our users. So I think it's not a bad idea to start the discussion downstream and then provide input to involved upstream projects.
Jiri
Jiri Eischmann eischmann@redhat.com wrote: ...
So I think it's not a bad idea to start the discussion downstream and then provide input to involved upstream projects.
Sure, and that sounds great. Just meant to remind people that a) it's not simply a packaging problem, and b) GNOME is already looking into doing something about this.
Allan
Hi Allan!
On Fri, 2015-04-24 at 18:33 +0100, Allan Day wrote:
This will largely be determined by whatever decisions are made upstream in the GNOME project. (Chat is integrated into several key GNOME modules - such as the shell and the control center - so it's not simply a matter of switching packages around.)
This isn't true: neither control-center nor gnome-shell depends on Empathy in Fedora 22 (in fact, not a single package on my computer does). I don't think control-center has anything at all to do with chat, does it? gnome-shell used to expect Empathy to be installed, but I believe that changed during 3.15 sometime. So Empathy is really just an application like any other, and doesn't deserve any special protection anymore.
gnome-shell used to integrate very well with Empathy, but it's been getting worse over the years. Since 3.8 or so it stopped setting my status to Away when I locked my computer, which I felt was a serious regression. As of 3.16 it has devolved into a mess: notifications of new messages now only work about half the time rather than always (definitely a new bug in F22, perhaps in gnome-shell), and buddy invites often disappear into the void (I think this is a new bug too; perhaps they just get ignored if my status in Away, since they're notifications). Frankly, it was much better in F21 than it is in F22.
There are other serious problems with Empathy as well: XMPP or SIP calls regularly fail with not even an error message, just a blank screen. In group XMPP calls, it's pure chance whether I can hear all participants or only one.
I think it's absolutely time to remove Empathy from the default install. It requires a significant investment of developer manpower to get it up to an acceptable level of quality for Fedora. Still, I use it every day, because everything else is worse. :( Polari is IRC-only, so it's not even attempting to be a replacement (and it's useless for me; I need Jabber too, and I expect it in the same app). Pidgin looks horrible and it uses the message tray. I think we should just not install any chat client, since we have no reasonable replacement, and let the user decide for himself what to install if one is needed.
Michael
Michael Catanzaro mcatanzaro@gnome.org wrote: ...
This isn't true: neither control-center nor gnome-shell depends on Empathy in Fedora 22 (in fact, not a single package on my computer does).
According to jhbuild, both the shell and online accounts depend on telepathy-glib. And even if these aren't strict dependencies, there is integration...
I don't think control-center has anything at all to do with chat, does it?
Empathy is integrated into online accounts. (This is covered by the user docs, so that's something else that would be affected by changes here.)
Allan
On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 10:13 AM, Allan Day allanpday@gmail.com wrote:
Michael Catanzaro mcatanzaro@gnome.org wrote: ...
This isn't true: neither control-center nor gnome-shell depends on Empathy in Fedora 22 (in fact, not a single package on my computer does).
According to jhbuild, both the shell and online accounts depend on telepathy-glib. And even if these aren't strict dependencies, there is integration...
Empathy is basically a graphical front end for the telepathy communications [1] stack which is made up of a number of components which in turn provide XMPP/link-local/pidgin frontend etc.
Is the plan to just reimplement the front end UX and keep the backends and hence not have to reimplement a chunk of the various integration points or to reimplement the while lot, presumably there could be OTR/Telegram integrated with that stack?
----- Original Message ----- From: "Peter Robinson" pbrobinson@gmail.com To: "Discussions about development for the Fedora desktop" desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2015 11:24:25 AM Subject: Re: Instant Messaging in Fedora Workstation
On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 10:13 AM, Allan Day allanpday@gmail.com wrote:
Michael Catanzaro mcatanzaro@gnome.org wrote: ...
This isn't true: neither control-center nor gnome-shell depends on Empathy in Fedora 22 (in fact, not a single package on my computer does).
According to jhbuild, both the shell and online accounts depend on telepathy-glib. And even if these aren't strict dependencies, there is integration...
Empathy is basically a graphical front end for the telepathy communications [1] stack which is made up of a number of components which in turn provide XMPP/link-local/pidgin frontend etc.
Is the plan to just reimplement the front end UX and keep the backends and hence not have to reimplement a chunk of the various integration points or to reimplement the while lot, presumably there could be OTR/Telegram integrated with that stack?
I don't think anyone wants to reinvent the wheel. So if there is any new client in the works it will be based on Telepathy. Polari, the new IRC client for GNOME, is also based on Telepathy. However the problem is that there don't seem to be enough people interested in working on IM clients any more. Telepathy lacks support for new networks and features and Empathy hasn't seen any noticable development for years.
Jiri
----- Original Message -----
Hi Allan!
On Fri, 2015-04-24 at 18:33 +0100, Allan Day wrote:
This will largely be determined by whatever decisions are made upstream in the GNOME project. (Chat is integrated into several key GNOME modules - such as the shell and the control center - so it's not simply a matter of switching packages around.)
This isn't true: neither control-center nor gnome-shell depends on Empathy in Fedora 22 (in fact, not a single package on my computer does).
It's completely true in the sense that both gnome-shell uses Telepathy as its chat backend, and that the Online Accounts panel in control-center allow setting up Telepathy chat accounts.
Changing that isn't a matter of removing an app to drop-in another.
<snip>
On Mon, 2015-04-27 at 04:43 -0400, Bastien Nocera wrote:
It's completely true in the sense that both gnome-shell uses Telepathy as its chat backend
Is there any user-facing issue if there is no telepathy client installed? There is no UI remaining for chat ANYWHERE in the shell except the input field in the new message notification that you would never receive without Empathy installed.
and that the Online Accounts panel in control-center allow setting up Telepathy chat accounts.
Yes, this is true. I suppose we would need to rip out chat from every type of online account. :( But if a maintainer doesn't materialize for Empathy, we'll probably have to.
Michael
On Fri, 2015-04-24 at 18:33 +0100, Allan Day wrote:
(Chat is integrated into several key GNOME modules - such as the shell and the control center - so it's not simply a matter of switching packages around.)
I guess most of the options in the Online Accounts panel do not make sense without Empathy installed by default, though. :/
2015-04-25 1:33 GMT+08:00 Allan Day allanpday@gmail.com:
Empathy, which is our default IM client, has been dead upstream for some time, so I'd like to start a discussion about what instant messaging experience should look like in Fedora Workstation.
This will largely be determined by whatever decisions are made upstream in the GNOME project. (Chat is integrated into several key GNOME modules - such as the shell and the control center - so it's not simply a matter of switching packages around.)
That said, I'm sure that the GNOME release team would welcome input on the subject. (They have discussed this subject recently themselves.)
I wonder if they reached a consensus?
From what I learned, I tend to think Pidgin might be the currently best choice
for default IM in Workstation. It is better to offer our (new) users a working IM with some development than integrating a dead project IMO. Tox or GNOME Chat might be the future, but does not seem mature for like F23.
PS: Actually I find myself have not used desktop IM for some time...
Regards, Alick
On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 7:55 PM, Jiri Eischmann eischmann@redhat.com wrote:
Hi, Empathy, which is our default IM client, has been dead upstream for some time, so I'd like to start a discussion about what instant messaging experience should look like in Fedora Workstation.
Thanks for opening the discussion. This is actually a pain for many of our users (and ourselves). I know many people (myself included) who don't use Empathy at all because of lack of OTR support. They switch to pidgin despite the lack of Gnome integration.
It pretty much comes down to a question if we want to build a well integrated multi-protocol client (continuing with Empathy/Pidgin, or starting GNOME Chat) or if we should give it up and embrace all those popular, unfortunately mostly closed services (Skype, Messenger, Hangouts, Telegram...) and make them as integrated in the desktop as possible.
Although It would be nice to have as many as possible services integrated with Online Accounts, moving away from Jabber will be a disappointment for the majority of our community/users. I tend to disagree with what you write at your blog post. Jabber usage is increasing since Snowden. Many journalists rely on Jabber/OTR to work. A lot of well-known Jabber servers were forced to rate limit registrations due to increased demand over the last year.
Although I don't have a solution to offer I'd really hoped that Gnome Chat would have a more rapid development.
On Fri, 2015-04-24 at 18:55 +0200, Jiri Eischmann wrote:
It pretty much comes down to a question if we want to build a well integrated multi-protocol client (continuing with Empathy/Pidgin, or starting GNOME Chat) or if we should give it up and embrace all those popular, unfortunately mostly closed services (Skype, Messenger, Hangouts, Telegram...) and make them as integrated in the desktop as possible. The latter would probably clash a bit with one of our 4 foundation - freedom.
I have no idea what we would do to make Skype "integrate better." If the Skype developers want it to not look like Windows 95, that's on them.
Hangouts: we can kind of support with a web app, but Google+ is broken in WebKitGTK+ 2.8, so... that would need to be fixed. It's a regression from 2.6, but not really possible to bisect due to long build times and GTK port build breaks.
Facebook XMPP is being dropped next week. We actually have top-class Facebook support right now, but it's about to disappear. Bye Facebook. We could provide the web app in Software, though. That's just a matter of writing an appdata file.
GNOME Chat is the way forward, but with zero developers it isn't going anywhere. Even with a huge team, it will obviously never be able to support Skype, Hangouts, or Facebook.
Pessimism aside: Telegram looks interesting. I didn't realize it was so popular, or that the protocol was open, or that they have a GPLv3+ client for Linux. This, we should investigate further.
Michael
On Fri, Apr 24, 2015 at 01:26:01PM -0500, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
Pessimism aside: Telegram looks interesting. I didn't realize it was so popular, or that the protocol was open, or that they have a GPLv3+ client for Linux. This, we should investigate further.
Ooh -- I realized all of those but the last. Sounds worthwhile to me.
I'm a bit concerned about the enthusiasm for Telegram. The clients may be FOSS but the server software isn't. In addition to this the use of a central server is troubling with respect to metadata collection.
Has anyone considered Tox? It's a FOSS replacement for Skype and doesn't rely on a central server. It's still in a pre-alpha state but has several working clients. I've tested qTox and it works nicely with sound and video through a firewall. There was a Gtk client (Venom) but it's deprecated.
A large project like Fedora being interested in Tox could make all the difference and increase traction to help move it towards a stable and feature complete release. I've noticed several people mentioning OTR. Tox has encryption built in.
I could go on about it but the information is on their website and the code is available for perusal.
Ananda
----- Original Message ----- From: "Ananda Samaddar" ananda.samaddar@zoho.com To: desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org Sent: Saturday, April 25, 2015 7:29:20 PM Subject: Re: Re: Instant Messaging in Fedora Workstation
I'm a bit concerned about the enthusiasm for Telegram. The clients may be FOSS but the server software isn't. In addition to this the use of a central server is troubling with respect to metadata collection.
Has anyone considered Tox? It's a FOSS replacement for Skype and doesn't rely on a central server. It's still in a pre-alpha state but has several working clients. I've tested qTox and it works nicely with sound and video through a firewall. There was a Gtk client (Venom) but it's deprecated.
A large project like Fedora being interested in Tox could make all the difference and increase traction to help move it towards a stable and feature complete release. I've noticed several people mentioning OTR. Tox has encryption built in.
I could go on about it but the information is on their website and the code is available for perusal.
Ananda
Tox was also mentioned by several users, but the number was much smaller compared to Telegram. There is a Tox repository available in Copr BTW: https://copr.fedoraproject.org/coprs/gnikandrov/tox-im/
The server part of Telegram is closed source, but they've promised to open source it when it's ready. The API/protocol is open, existing clients are open, the server side is promised to be open in near future. I don't think Telegram scores badly in terms of openness. What they're not planning is an infrastructure of independent servers though.
Jiri
On Sun, 26 Apr 2015 07:18:29 -0400 (EDT) Jiri Eischmann jeischma@redhat.com wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "Ananda Samaddar" ananda.samaddar@zoho.com To: desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org Sent: Saturday, April 25, 2015 7:29:20 PM Subject: Re: Re: Instant Messaging in Fedora Workstation
I'm a bit concerned about the enthusiasm for Telegram. The clients may be FOSS but the server software isn't. In addition to this the use of a central server is troubling with respect to metadata collection.
Has anyone considered Tox? It's a FOSS replacement for Skype and doesn't rely on a central server. It's still in a pre-alpha state but has several working clients. I've tested qTox and it works nicely with sound and video through a firewall. There was a Gtk client (Venom) but it's deprecated.
A large project like Fedora being interested in Tox could make all the difference and increase traction to help move it towards a stable and feature complete release. I've noticed several people mentioning OTR. Tox has encryption built in.
I could go on about it but the information is on their website and the code is available for perusal.
Ananda
Tox was also mentioned by several users, but the number was much smaller compared to Telegram. There is a Tox repository available in Copr BTW: https://copr.fedoraproject.org/coprs/gnikandrov/tox-im/
The server part of Telegram is closed source, but they've promised to open source it when it's ready. The API/protocol is open, existing clients are open, the server side is promised to be open in near future. I don't think Telegram scores badly in terms of openness. What they're not planning is an infrastructure of independent servers though.
Jiri
Therein lies the biggest issues with Telegram: it depends on proprietary server code and also federation is not planned. I consider these to be significant problems. Telegram 'promising' to release the code to their server is not good enough in my opinion. I hate to go Stallman (although I have the utmost respect for RMS) on you but Telegram users are still tied to the perceived and/or actual benevolence of the server vendor.
Tox is already p2p and cross platform. The only cross platfrom FOSS voip application that springs to mind is Jitsi. Tox works through a firewall; both my machines have the default firewall settings from the netinstall iso, i.e. fairly restrictive.
If popularity is an important criterion then surely Skype would be top of the list for inclusion in Fedora and Gnome. For reasons too obvious to state that won't and shouldn't happen. There appears to be a chicken-egg scenario here unfortunately with regards to Tox.
Ananda
Sorry to repeat myself, but like I wrote in my previous post the default chat client for Fedora Workstation needs much better Office 365 and Lync integration:
Most organizations and academic institutions are migrating to Office 365 as
they reduce their in-house physical server count, consolidate licenses and go "to the cloud". These same organizations also have a large inventory of existing Windows desktops that could be turned into Fedora Workstations instead of taking the expensive route of buying Macs. There's a huge potential WIN here to provide major cost-savings to organizations and provide a cutting-edge Linux environment that will beat the poorly implement UNIX-like environment of Mac OS X.
- Empathy/Pidgin currently doesn't support enough features from Lync (now
Skype for Business) [1] - the Microsoft enterprise communication tool - and that's a show stopper. You can't do video calls, you can't initiate meetings and you can't do screen-sharing or file-transfers.
The real problem is integration with enterprise services and that's the big challenge ahead for Workstation.
According to the WG product description for Fedora Workstation you want to target university, enterprise (corporate) and tech-companies and that pretty much comprises 90% of the users you want to attract. Most users in the real world (corporate, university or tech-company) use Google Hangouts, Skype or Lync (now Skype for Business) and in some cases just plain IRC. For meetings there's typically Goto Meeting which currently has no Linux client.
[1] http://next.skypeforbusiness.com/
On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 9:35 AM, Ananda Samaddar ananda.samaddar@zoho.com wrote:
On Sun, 26 Apr 2015 07:18:29 -0400 (EDT) Jiri Eischmann jeischma@redhat.com wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "Ananda Samaddar" ananda.samaddar@zoho.com To: desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org Sent: Saturday, April 25, 2015 7:29:20 PM Subject: Re: Re: Instant Messaging in Fedora Workstation
I'm a bit concerned about the enthusiasm for Telegram. The clients may be FOSS but the server software isn't. In addition to this the use of a central server is troubling with respect to metadata collection.
Has anyone considered Tox? It's a FOSS replacement for Skype and doesn't rely on a central server. It's still in a pre-alpha state but has several working clients. I've tested qTox and it works nicely with sound and video through a firewall. There was a Gtk client (Venom) but it's deprecated.
A large project like Fedora being interested in Tox could make all the difference and increase traction to help move it towards a stable and feature complete release. I've noticed several people mentioning OTR. Tox has encryption built in.
I could go on about it but the information is on their website and the code is available for perusal.
Ananda
Tox was also mentioned by several users, but the number was much smaller compared to Telegram. There is a Tox repository available in Copr BTW: https://copr.fedoraproject.org/coprs/gnikandrov/tox-im/
The server part of Telegram is closed source, but they've promised to open source it when it's ready. The API/protocol is open, existing clients are open, the server side is promised to be open in near future. I don't think Telegram scores badly in terms of openness. What they're not planning is an infrastructure of independent servers though.
Jiri
Therein lies the biggest issues with Telegram: it depends on proprietary server code and also federation is not planned. I consider these to be significant problems. Telegram 'promising' to release the code to their server is not good enough in my opinion. I hate to go Stallman (although I have the utmost respect for RMS) on you but Telegram users are still tied to the perceived and/or actual benevolence of the server vendor.
Tox is already p2p and cross platform. The only cross platfrom FOSS voip application that springs to mind is Jitsi. Tox works through a firewall; both my machines have the default firewall settings from the netinstall iso, i.e. fairly restrictive.
If popularity is an important criterion then surely Skype would be top of the list for inclusion in Fedora and Gnome. For reasons too obvious to state that won't and shouldn't happen. There appears to be a chicken-egg scenario here unfortunately with regards to Tox.
Ananda
-- desktop mailing list desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 2:18 PM, Jiri Eischmann jeischma@redhat.com wrote:
The server part of Telegram is closed source, but they've promised to open source it when it's ready. The API/protocol is open, existing clients are open, the server side is promised to be open in near future. I don't think Telegram scores badly in terms of openness. What they're not planning is an infrastructure of independent servers though.
But it's not federated. So even if the open up server's code you still need to trust them for running the code they release and to hold the complete social graph of the whole network. Not very aligned with our values.
On 24/04/15 09:55 AM, Jiri Eischmann wrote:
Hi, Empathy, which is our default IM client, has been dead upstream for some time, so I'd like to start a discussion about what instant messaging experience should look like in Fedora Workstation.
I've already written two blog posts about it. The goal of the first one was to describe the situation and collect input from users: https://eischmann.wordpress.com/2015/04/19/instant-messaging-in-fedora-works...
The second one already works with user feedback from two surveys: https://eischmann.wordpress.com/2015/04/24/instant-messaging-in-fedora-works...
It pretty much comes down to a question if we want to build a well integrated multi-protocol client (continuing with Empathy/Pidgin, or starting GNOME Chat) or if we should give it up and embrace all those popular, unfortunately mostly closed services (Skype, Messenger, Hangouts, Telegram...) and make them as integrated in the desktop as possible. The latter would probably clash a bit with one of our 4 foundation - freedom.
Jiri
From what I understand in this discussion, telepathy is basically the engine to support apps for IM and Empathy is merely a frontend. About the desktop integration, Gnome already have extensions(extensions.gnome.org) meaning someone could simply write them for the above listed i.e. from Skype to Telegram. Essentially, tools are already available for better integration but are often left rotten. Why not rewriting say Empathy to support these extensions?
What is also needed are proper documentations which is arguably one of Gnome weakness so improvement needs to be done. Those are ideas coming in mind.
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