Re: [dev] [proposal] Suckless Tox-Client as a Skype replacement

From: FRIGN <dev_AT_frign.de>
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 15:48:25 +0100

On Mon, 24 Mar 2014 15:15:25 +0100
Christoph Lohmann <20h_AT_r-36.net> wrote:

> Just look at how it’s done in bitlbee. You have the tox account and
> there are users you open queries to. Just look at how different IRC can
> be represented in pidgin and regular IRC clients like irssi. So it’s
> just a marginal difference in where to place the name and where to navi‐
> gate to to manage contacts.

Ok, thanks for clearing that up.
 
> This is not a client for a mass market, but the masses can’t be saved.
> They can only be controlled by a different master.

Free software can be popularized, but only if there is a big company
behind it (see Google). The fact they gave up XMPP for Gmail shows that
it is a company after all.
There are only a few cases I can recall where free software really beat
proprietary software (encryption, partly office, web-frameworks, CMS),
and in all cases, it was due to the ability to interface the software
with the users in a way it was done with the proprietary before or
where it was just necessary.

> What you should work on is:
> 1.) Implement the tox protocol directly or via the API in bitlbee.
> 2.) Think of and implement a way to handle voice/video via DCC and implement
> this as a handler in for example irssi.
> 3.) Add this DCC ability to all other protocols in bitlbee, which have some
> extension for this.
>
> You really help all of us more by following these steps.

Developing software is partly about personal preference. As I can't
identify with bitlbee's concept as much as just using a dedicated
client for each job (which is imho closer to the Unix-philosophy), I
wouldn't be really dedicated to work on this implementation.

It's in my interest to develop a client also favorable for intermediate
users.
I think developing this kind of piece of software would bring the
suckless-philosophy closer to a bigger audience (and most probably
developers waiting to become professionals).

Cheers

FRIGN

-- 
FRIGN <dev_AT_frign.de>
Received on Mon Mar 24 2014 - 15:48:25 CET

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