Psi in 2009

So Psi moves along sluggishly as usual.  0.13 was not released by Christmas.  There were reasonable explanations for that.  Despite this, I think 2009 will be a good year for Psi, and possibly its best year yet.

I suppose I can’t put words in anyone else’s mouth, but I have high hopes we’ll see Kev and Remko return to regular development after their XMPP book, and that Misha will finally be contributing Yandex stuff back.  As for myself, these past few months stand as a record for the longest time Barracuda let me focus on Psi issues (which, being all Jingle stuff targetting Psi 0.14 or later, is easy to miss).

So, post-book and post-0.13, I predict a sudden surge of visible development, and more attention to submitted patches.

Despite the perception that Psi lags “behind” other client projects, keep in mind we have a number of significant features that have already been started (with major progress) and just need to be finished:

  • Jingle audio and video
  • Whiteboarding
  • WebKit chat windows
  • Revamped message history interface
  • Revamped roster
  • Plugins
  • Bonjour chat
  • Automatic updates
  • Certificate/SmartCard authentication
  • SSO
  • XMPP URIs

Feel free to add more to this list.  I often forget what’s on the back burner.

Do note that the above is not a list of priority features, just a list of features that are partially complete for one reason or another.  The priorities going forward are a topic of a different message.  I just wanted to show that when you count all of this unfinished stuff, Psi is farther along than it appears to be.  The project has been around for so many years, and yet there is still so much to do. :)

Here’s to Psi in 2009!  I look forward to a great year with all of you.

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whalleylegion 5 pts

what happened to PSI ??? it has been stalled for 2 years now

justin 21 pts moderator

whalleylegion Indeed, development has been sparse and leadership has been lacking. I'm back now though, and in the next couple of months we'll be restoring the various web services and releasing a new version (0.15).

> ... The priorities going forward are a topic of a different message ...

Probably this message worths being written? (-:E

@Javier: Yes, i know. I don't like OTR and i hope XMPP moves forward with a good encryption XEP, which (can) make it's way in all important clients.

Yes, thanks for Psi!
Stable OTR support (at least by plugin) is necessary anyway, imho.

Hello Paul,

Seems that OTR isn't a good security model. XMPP is moving toward http://xmpp.org/extensions/inbox/xtls.html

PD:I'm only a user, not Psi devel

Psi is the best XMPP client, but it lacks OTR encryption for all platforms without patching. All my contacts have moved to Pidgin because of OTR, so i have moved too.

Thank you for Psi. The best XMPP IM client on the web and world - I'm using about 4 years now. I'm happy to see you still do hard work on contributing new features.
Unfortunately I'm not familiar with C language so Qt library, but I would love to help somehow - test and/or debug, maybe document (in polish).

I wish you and all the team members happy coding!

Yes, sorry, I was trying to be specific. The telepathy developers are responsible for Farsight, and they make major contributions to GStreamer. However, Psi does not use the entire telepathy stack (dbus daemon, gabble, etc), but only the multimedia streaming libraries.

Hello Justin,

As far as I know these are the same components of telepathy, aren't it?

Read here: http://gnomedesktop.org/node/4072

Hi Javier,

We're developing with GStreamer and Farsight.

Hello, and thank you for Psi!

How do you implement jingle support?Do you use the telepathy specifications or use a own library?

Regards

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