Oct 3, 2026, 5:44 AMSo finally read the at least the Pidgin part of https://op-co.de/blog/posts/emoji_xmpp_address/ and honestly considering just dropping #XMPP entirely from Pidgin 3 and even our server.
To put it nicely, the greater XMPP community hasn't exactly been kind to us over the years and really I'm starting to wondering why we continue to give them ammo.
Since the XMPP support in Pidgin 3 is currently just a skeleton, scrapping it isn't all that crazy.
So what do you all think?
Oct 3, 2026, 5:52 AMFor anyone that's curious, here's the diffstat of the main #Pidgin 3 branch if we delete the in-tree XMPP stuff. The majority of what we have (which isn't much) is in an external library.
19 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 1019 deletions(-)
@grimmy Petition for a variant of "Delete it" but it's "fuck em"
Hi @grimmy , XMPP dev here. I'm sorry that you feel that way, the main complain about Pidgin regarding XMPP is that it was used as reference for long while implementation (of XMPP part) was unmaintained (or at least not following) for a while, resulting in lot of complain and attacks on XMPP itself.
That doesn't mean that Pidgin is not a great project, and libpurple has long been used for the spectrum2 gateway (which is more or less unmaintained nowadays I believe, unfortunately).
1/3
@grimmy I think that Pidgin/libpurple are generally very appreciated (at least by me), we even have had an exchange about that in the past where I said "Everybody will be happy to see libpurple and so Pidgin back in the game."
https://mastodon.social/@Goffi/115688660869169327
I'm not talking for the "greater XMPP community", maybe some have been aggressive I don't know the details. In any case, I feel sad that FOSS projects are fighting each other (I see that a lot, specially in IM).
2/3
@grimmy I personally am keeping an eye on libpurple evolution as I would really love to see an XMPP gateway using it if we can do deep integration of other protocols, as we have talked in the aforementioned thread.
Anyway, I hope that you won't hold it against wider XMPP community, some people are annoying, other are greats (I met great people through time, some became friends), and keep up the good work.
3/3
@grimmy I hope XMPP support doesn’t go away. It’s the only protocol that matters to me lol.
Oct 3, 2026, 4:59 PM@colinstu well someone would always be free to implement it as a third party project and I can deflect all the toxicity away from me.
Also I should have verified it sooner but using a quote from a serial rapist about our security who is only credited for finding 2 "whoopsie" cves and never contributed code directly is an interesting take and this isn't the first time people have used that quote against us ..
@grimmy which quote? >v> and oof.. sorry to hear about all that too D:
Oct 3, 2026, 5:32 PM@colinstu This one
"a flock a zero days flying in formation"
This quote is from the 32nd Chaos Communication Congress in December 2015 which is before everything hit the fan about him in early to mid 2015.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Appelbaum#Allegations_of_sexual_misconduct
@martin I’ve tried Gajim several times before and just haven’t gotten into it. Dino looks promising, I’ll have to give it a shot!
Oct 4, 2026, 5:52 PM@grimmy disable and let them beg for it once everyone is back on Pidgin. :P
Oct 4, 2026, 6:24 PM@hbons I opened a review request to delete the plugin for now, the work on the external library will remain for now.
https://reviews.imfreedom.org/r/4855/
That said, finding motivation to work on anything XMPP again is going to be difficult especially as I'm shutting down our public non-federated #XMPP service because of abuse.