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NovaChat: Multi-Network Chat

nova.chat

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Re: NovaChat: Multi-Network Chat

#73
post #61

> NovaChat is a paid app with a monthly fee of $10 (price may go up after beta period) Wow $10/mo?! Pidgin was the multi-network chat tool, and was free! I'd understand $10 one-time, but not per month. And the price may go up? No thanks

As an original contributor to pidgin when it was marko’s gaim, I am flabbergasted at the state of open source chat today. I wonder if libpurple just needs to be updated to support cloud services/various chat apis. I’d be willing to bootstrap that project...

Pidgin/libpurple worked a lot better when most chat services were variants of XMPP.

Now everything's proprietary and hostile to unofficial clients. Most Matrix bridges have to do stuff like scrape the webapps to work.

Re: NovaChat: Multi-Network Chat

#74

Between this, Mastodon, Matrix, and others, I feel like we're witnessing the end of the centralized web era (everyone uses one network), and the return to a distributed Internet (lots of different services) with aggregators (Adium or NovaChat). The recent Twitch/Reddit/Twitter bans should only magnify this effect. Congrats Eric! I'm very excited to use this.

I think you are exaggerating. I try out a lot of things and decentralized services don't seem to be catching my interest.

It's not about how something is build, it's about what is done with it.

I'm also pretty sure that the "silent majority" is pretty happy to have toxic people out and it's probable that they will move to these services. Giving the same problem to other stakeholders.

Additionally, decentralized services probably won't receive billions in funding.

Re: NovaChat: Multi-Network Chat

#76

I've built a not for profit multi-platform capable matrix client that is now in open alpha called Syphon ( https://github.com/syphon-org/syphon ). This is largely to address the issue of proprietary chat clients. Private, secure communication (with a decent brand and ui) should be accessible to everyone by now. Signal does a great job of filling the void but if they fail or are blocked by a country or community, the…

While I like your app and definitely consider giving it a try now that it seems to support e2ee, you shouldn't create a new account to post the same message after your other one got voted down so hard. Please consider writing a "show HN" post instead.

Re: NovaChat: Multi-Network Chat

#77

I've been running my own Matrix but I haven't really looked at the state of the bridges. Does it allow, e.g, someone on whatsapp to make a video call with me and I see it on Riot?

Not as far as I am aware. Most proprietary chat apps have very little support outside basic messaging. Corrections and standard reaction emoji work for platforms that support it, but that's about as far as support goes in most cases.

Video calling, especially e2ee direct communication, would probably be unstable and if poor quality if you require the call to go through an extra translation hop.

Chat support has been getting better though, bridge performance has increased a lot over the past few months. If the web app for your bridge of choice supports calling, I see no theoretical limitation in implementing a call integration, though it would probably be very hard to get it working correctly.

Re: NovaChat: Multi-Network Chat

#78

Between this, Mastodon, Matrix, and others, I feel like we're witnessing the end of the centralized web era (everyone uses one network), and the return to a distributed Internet (lots of different services) with aggregators (Adium or NovaChat). The recent Twitch/Reddit/Twitter bans should only magnify this effect. Congrats Eric! I'm very excited to use this.

Ehhhh maybe. I don't think the general population will be dropping Facebook/Twitter/Reddit anytime soon.

Facebook is actually dying. Ask people around you that younger than 20 years (+- a few). No one is using facebook at that age. Facebook is for boomer.

Re: NovaChat: Multi-Network Chat

#80
post #64
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an original contributor to pidgin when it was marko’s gaim, I am flabbergasted at the state of open source chat today. I wonder if libpurple just needs to be updated to support cloud services/various chat apis. I’d be willing to bootstrap that project...

I would love to learn more about pidgin and ecosystem of bridges. Let me know if you're interested in chatting! I funded development of 7 open-source Matrix bridges so far. I would love to contribute more to the community of those trying to liberate the chat world.

The current maintainer of Pidgin livestreams several times week on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/rw_grim
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