ambitiousslab

Just as a warning, this is licensed under the AGPL, with a CLA that requires copyright assignment. So, they could pull the rug at any time:

2.3 Outbound License. Based on the grant of rights in Sections 2.1 and 2.2, if We include Your Contribution in a Material, We may license the Contribution under any license, including copyleft, permissive, commercial, or proprietary licenses.

On iPhone, I recommend Monal.

Monal comes close.

To be honest, I think the above clients and services like Snikket fit that description.

Now, I wouldn't say they're all on the same level UX-wise as WhatsApp, Telegram etc. But I do think they are 90%-95% of the way there, and in my experience that's enough to convince friends and family to switch over.

In my experience, when people haven't wanted to switch, it's normally not been because of the clients, but because they don't want to install yet another app to talk to someone.

Any new open source software is always a net positive.

But, there are a few small caveats to the way they've done it (depending on how cynical/cautious you are):

• Because Proton are not accepting contributions, they own all the copyright, so can make the code closed source again if they want to (that wouldn't affect the already released versions, but future versions)
• They could likely take down any derivative on iOS, since Apple will always take instruction from the copyright holder, for GPL'd code
• Since the builds are not reproducible, there's no guarantee that the binaries they distribute are built from the source code

How do you define modern? I would call these modern clients personally:

• Android: Conversations
• iOS / MacOS: Monal
• Linux: Dino
• Windows: Gajim

It's not perfect yet, but it's much, much better than the old days.

OMEMO is supported by every major client, and they interoperate successfully. Unfortunately, most clients are stuck with an older version of the OMEMO spec. It's not ideal, but it doesn't cause any practical issue, unless you use Kaidan or UWPX, which only support the latest version.

All popular clients and servers support retrieving chat history now too.

In practice, I've been using it for several months to chat with friends and family, and haven't had any issues.

I'd like to second Snikket - it's designed for this use case and is very simple to set up.

If you'd rather not use Snikket, check out these recommendations for clients and servers.

Hope it works for you! Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

I'm very sympathetic to this blog post, as it nicely describes why I use XMPP.

But, on a related note, I have noticed an interesting pattern where people talk past each other a little, especially when conflating user freedom and security.

If I'm to generalise, I feel the outlook of XMPP users tends to be more systemic and long-term. We've seen how chat networks come and go, we've seen the dangers of companies promising to serve your interests whilst also being a chokepoint of centralisation. So we tend to de-emphasize papercuts or current issues in clients and the protocol, on the basis that we have the power to fix them if we want to.

I feel that's shown in this blog post - all the points come back to the benefits of user freedom: no one entity controls you, the protocol serves you, you can choose your own clients, and if you don't like it, you can always switch / write your own!

What I've seen is that the people who gravitate towards Signal tend to be more concerned with the here and now - e.g. "how do I get my friend off telegram onto a secure / private service". I feel in many cases that making arguments about federation and the structure of the network won't sway them, as they'll always be able to point to some area where the clients are deficient in the here and now (depending on their interests - papercuts in the clients, different versions of OMEMO being used across the network etc).

I don't really have a solution to this, but I think all we can do is continue to make the clients and servers as good as they can possibly be. I always encourage anyone I manage to migrate to XMPP to send me any annoyances they find in the apps, so that they can eventually be fixed. We need to be ready for when Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp etc. abuse their power, because (as we've seen from the fediverse) that's the only time that "regular people" will care for the arguments that we're making about federation and user freedom.

Different strokes for different folks! I've been fortunate enough that many of my family and friends have been happy enough to follow me.

But I don't disagree with you, Signal has a much more recognisable brand and better user experience. These are things that we need to improve if we're going to get anywhere near the level of adoption Signal has.

How I Got a Truly Anonymous XMPP Account:

• Open my client (e.g. Conversations, Monal, Dino)
• Pick a random server, username and password
• Click register

Sorry, it's a cheap joke, but it still baffles me that Signal requires a phone number, so I felt I had to post it :)

Of course, this is not XMPP-specific either, just my protocol of choice, there are many other open alternatives that also offer such functionality.

I originally suggested Monal to my friend (who is quite into iOS and really appreciates a well designed application) and she found the same, but then she tried Siskin, and was happy enough to use it to this day.