I really like that xmpp is experiencing a sort of revival at the moment.
Not maybe in terms of user-base, but Conversations for android is really good, on iOS ChatSecure has some issues, but is usable. OTR encryption is being replaced by OMEMO, and that actually works. I can use and try out clients to my hearts content, with messages being synchronized between them.
That I can run my own server on prosody or ejabberd is really great as well.
And since we're back to "Hey can we you use Signal/Threema/Whatsapp/Viber ?" anyhow, it's actually relatively easy to slide in the next option:
Conversations reached a point where I can easily install it on my family member phones and they feel it's a "normal" messenger. This doesn't sound like a high bar to reach but surprisingly it didn't happen before (at least for XMPP).
Recently a spin-off of Conversations - Quicksy was introduced [0] [1] that makes the entry even easier as it offers phone number-based contact discovery. From my experience people are used to quick on-boardings and don't even want to think about things like "username" and looking for contacts.
It was the niche of niches but the Nokia n900's standard built in xmpp client could do voice/video/filetransfer with a gnome desktop's standard messaging infrastructure (telepathy or something?) in what, like 2010 ?
But, besides that, I get what you're saying about "normal" messengers and conversations nowadays.
It's interesting to look back at the role Mr. Gultsch played in this XMPP revival. He correctly identified features missing or present in other messengers (e.g. offline files or good mobile connectivity), wrote appropriate specs (e.g. [0]) and made sure they went through XSF, implemented them in his client, helped implement it in other clients and implemented some of them in servers, or procured server developers to do so. Then he made sure that server administrators have an easy way to check compliance that ultimately led to SSLLabs-like online checker [1] that was a GSOC project that he also mentored.
Quicksy was conceived to test if the idea of phone number-based contact discovery would bring more people to XMPP. He's not just talking about stuff, he's actually implementing his ideas to check if they work!
This proactive approach is something that truly amazes me, especially when the default response of many people is cynicism and ranting that "the world is bad".
I don't want to downplay role of other people here but I'm 100% sure if it wasn't for Daniel's involvement we wouldn't be talking about XMPP today.
While I understand the concerns and I appreciate all of what Conversations' author is doing for the community, other clients have also seen significant improvements lately.
Gajim[0] has practically come back from the "dead". There is a huge difference, UI/UX-wise but not just, between pre and post 1.0, (1.1 at the time of writing, 1.2 coming).
There is also dino[1], a nice and simple desktop client, and converse.js[2], a fast-developing web-client.
Movim[3] and Salut-à-Toi[4] are also putting in a lot of work on the social network side.
The real pain for Pidgin is the complete lack of XEP-313 due to Pidgin's aged logging system, and I would really like to see a working message sync for Pidgin :(
EDIT: https://github.com/CkNoSFeRaTU/pidgin apparently has had XEP-313 patched into Pidgin for years now. Combined with lurch and Carbons, message sync is working fine.
I wish Pidgin would just disappear. It is absolutely unusable without all these plugins in a modern multi client world, and most users don't know they need them.
The delivery receipts issue is a decade old [0]! Libpurple is a mess to implement all the modern features, because it tries to support the baseline of so many different protocols.
I wish it would reborn, that I agree on. Disappear - no. Please no. I still need to connect to 3-4 systems, and the last thing I want is 3-4 messengers, especially if all of them are webapps. Pidgin is still the only thing standing between me and total messenger madness.
I was looking into iOS options to recommend to friends and ChatSecure seems rather dormant. https://monal.im however is actively developed and the author is very friendly and responsive.
I gave Jabber another chance a while ago... using both ChatSecure on the phone and Gajim on the computer (phone+computer logged in on both ends of the conversation). Unfortunately it was a complete failure. Message arrival was flakey. Some messages arrived only on the computer, others only on the phone. Conversations were sometimes one-sided, with one half on phone, other on computer. Not usable for chat. All around, I have to sadly say (after 15+ years of Jabber use) that this is what I'm used to with Jabber, and that I honestly cannot recommend it to friends :-/
I haven't seen anything like this in ages; what server and clients were you using? Between the history feature most things support and message carbons you should just get every message everywhere reliably (and that's what happens out of the box for me with most setups).
Not maybe in terms of user-base, but Conversations for android is really good, on iOS ChatSecure has some issues, but is usable. OTR encryption is being replaced by OMEMO, and that actually works. I can use and try out clients to my hearts content, with messages being synchronized between them.
That I can run my own server on prosody or ejabberd is really great as well.
And since we're back to "Hey can we you use Signal/Threema/Whatsapp/Viber ?" anyhow, it's actually relatively easy to slide in the next option:
"Hmmm, why don't we use ChatSecure ?"
Thanks everyone for making it happen.