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Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

pidgin.im

131–140 of 461 posts

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#131

Does Pidgin still store passwords in a plaintext file in your user profile?

what else are they going to do? encrypt the files and store the key... somewhere? interact with local keyrings which aren't compatible across all platforms?

>interact with local keyrings which aren't compatible across all platforms?

Yes, that's how git does it.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#132
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I finally stopped using it when Google Chat[0] went away. [0] Not that Google Chat, the other one.

Google Talk* There was no product named Google Chat until recently.

Ugh, you're right. I failed. I was used to using the slang "GChat" back in the day.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#134
post #89

Does Pidgin still store passwords in a plaintext file in your user profile?

This argument has been argued over and over. Either the passwords are stored in some form of symmetric encryption to which the secret is not required to be entered by the user on startup, in which case it's just security theater as malware/nosy fellow users can just grab the key too, or they make you enter a master key on startup, which most users will not enable The same is ultimately true for browser password manag…

Windows and Mac have had solutions to this for years. You can encrypt user files using their OS login, so they don't have to decrypt every time they start the app.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does not everyone still use it? I and most of my friends do. They are also responsible for my favorite bug report ever: https://bugs.gentoo.org/35890

Mate, the general population increasingly don’t even use desktops or laptops for personal usage anymore let alone a desktop OS specific IM client from the early 2000s.

My daughter (who teaches math at HS) asked me to create educational videos for her kids who don't know how to work a computer. They only know phones.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#136
post #38

Considering this is open source (which I'm assuming includes the plugins), wouldn't this be a much better alternative to the native apps on mobile? Curious as to why this hasn't been ported to Android/iOS. I'd much prefer this over apps that need permission to my blood type to function. Pidgin was great back in the day for convenience, but there is a legitimate argument to be made for privacy here too. EDIT: It just…

iOS applications aren't allowed to stay awake constantly talking to a bunch of different network services. For iOS IM to work, a centralized server (and corresponding developer ID) has to send a notification to you, sent first to Apple to be proxied via Apple's push notification service (APNS) to which each iOS device maintains a persistent connection. This means that some third party service has to know when you get…

You don’t have to put an entire message text into APNS notification. Apple (and google GCM, and webpush) notifications only deliver a structured event to the application (which may or may not contain any text), and once the app is activated (if not yet), it has to connect to its own server to get a full representation of what was sent, update vv-status, etc. APNS/GCM are not instant messengers on their own, though may be used as such in simple cases.

the main reason I'm switching to Android

You may be interested in reading this comment then: https://www.reddit.com/r/signal/comments/ap9lin/comment/eg7v...

Likely, iOS version of Signal uses the same “empty ping” technique, so you don’t have to worry about Apple reading your texts, unless you’re concerned with metadata leak. But unless they’re spoofing a websocket with fake packets, it will leak anyway.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#137
post #119

Still using it as my Hangouts client via ye-olde GTalk plugin, even though I thought Google had stopped supporting it. I've debated several times switching over to the purple-hangouts plugin so that I can get proper groupchat support, but the last time I tried it wanted me to do some shady-looking stuff with signing into Google and using the Developer Tools to grab the authentication key.

They're killing Hangouts soon, so this is probably moot anyway.

I thought it was just transitioning to Chat?

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#138
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I finally stopped using it when Google Chat[0] went away. [0] Not that Google Chat, the other one.

The good old time, when Google used XMPP..

And Facebook, too. I miss using Pidgin for my facebook messages.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#139
post #49

Does nobody remember Pidgin? It was one of the first things a lot of people installed on their machines 15 years ago along with Firefox. We used it as an alternative client to AOL Instant Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. It used to be called GAIM.

I used it as ICQ client back in 2000's. And I use Pidgin as a Jabber messenger with self hosted XMPP server.

Re: Pidgin – A Universal Chat Client

#140
post #79
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s an easy way to fix this. The Pidgin iOS app could be forked into a different licensing model. It also need not be open source, just demonstrate feature parity. Another way is to modularize the core messaging layer under a BSD license, and have the desktop app and iOS app both implement the front-end (and OS specific functionality) under distinct licenses. There are many ways to skin this cat.

libpurple (the actual messaging library) is already modularised, many different people mantain[ed] different modules, it's been used my many third party messaging clients including Adium and multi-IM browser clients from those days like Meebo or imo. It's not a commercial project with a CLA, it doesn't have a single owner, many of the people who contributed major parts have moved on or would object to a license chang…

Meebo was the shit back then. (In browser GAIM, even fb chat, irc, etc).

I followed a few of the developers for a bit as I really wanted to work there. I believed they got aquired into the g+ team (gchat? maybe?).

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