[kwlug-disc] Cross Platform Messaging Clients

[Bob Jonkman]

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Cranky writes:

> Has anyone found a decent SMS messaging client for Android that
> also has cross-platform and cross-account capabilities?  I've been
> using Google Hangouts but I'm finding that it's really unreliable
> (my daughter isn't getting my texts more than half the time).

To be clear, SMS is a text service provided by the cell phone company
which uses the "extra room" in cellular packets to transmit up to 160
characters of text. SMS doesn't need a data connection.

Everything else (Google Hangouts, Skype, WhatsApp) uses some variation
of XMPP (eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol[1]) to send text
over a data connection. Because it uses a completely different data
layer it is not directly compatible with SMS.

Google Chat was at one time conformant with XMPP, but when Hangouts was
introduced it became impossible to use XMPP clients to communicate with
people using Hangouts. I still have Cranky's Google Chat address in my
XMPP roster, and it appears to show when he's connected, but I can no
longer chat with him.

Same with Facebook's chat, which could be used with an XMPP client (like
Jabber or Pidgin), but wouldn't federate with other XMPP servers. Now
even third-party clients don't work.

Many services (Hangouts, Whatsapp, probably Signal) use a proprietary
variation of XMPP for communicating. Might as well be completely
proprietary -- a perfect example of commercial corporations using Free
Software libraries and code but not returning new development back to
the community.

Other services do use completely proprietary protocols: Yahoo!
Messenger, MSN, ICQ...

There are client apps like Signal and Kik (I thought) that try to route
messages through XMPP (or their proprietary equivalent), and fall back
to SMS. These generally use your phone number as your messaging ID.

Similarly, there are many other "multi-headed" clients that try to
provide access to many different services with incompatible protocols:
Pidgin, Trillian, Jitsi.

And then there are the services that provide back-end gateways that
allow Y!M to communicate with MSN, or that let Skype send messages to
SMS recipients. But more and more I'm seeing silos of incompatibility.
The most recent debacle is Open Whisper Systems and their Signal app[2,3].

The long and short of it is: You gotta use the client and protocol of
the people you're communicating with. As with all things in the Free
Software world, I would steer them to open standards and Free Software
clients. To that end I use XMPP, with Pidgin on my desktop, Xabber on my
phone, and I run my own Prosody server which provides XMPP services.

- --Bob.

[1] XMPP RFC6120: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6120

[2] Discussion on LibrePlanet Ontario mailing list:
http://lists.libreplanet.org/archive/html/libreplanet-ca-on/2016-05/msg00013.html

[3] OWS and Signal discussion in the !Fediverse:
https://n2.federati.net/search/notice?q=whisper



- --
Bob Jonkman <bjonkman at sobac.com>          Phone: +1-519-635-9413
SOBAC Microcomputer Services             http://sobac.com/sobac/
Software   ---   Office & Business Automation   ---   Consulting
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On 2016-05-12 11:33 AM, Allan Zhang wrote:
> Do you think your issue is the SMS client, or cellular reception?
> 
> If it's because of reception, you may want to try a messenger that
>  uses data, like Signal, which can also be your SMS client. 
> Personally, I just have a bunch of messaging apps to accommodate
> the preferences of others.
> 
> For just SMS, I've also used QKSMS, an open source SMS client made
> by Waterloo devs. However, I've found that non-stock Messenger apps
> have issues with MMS so I stick with stock.
> 
> 
> -------- Original Message -------- From: CrankyOldBugger 
> <crankyoldbugger at gmail.com> Sent: May 12, 2016 11:18:41 AM EDT To:
>  KWLUG discussion <kwlug-disc at kwlug.org> Subject: [kwlug-disc]
> Cross Platform Messaging Clients
> 
> Has anyone found a decent SMS messaging client for Android that
> also has cross-platform and cross-account capabilities?  I've been
> using Google Hangouts but I'm finding that it's really unreliable
> (my daughter isn't getting my texts more than half the time).
> 
> I'm seeing lots of messaging apps, but 99 times out of a hundred
> you join their network of users and you can't add people from your
> other lists (i.e. Skype, Google, etc).  I don't want to maintain a
> bunch of networks on my phone.  I want one app to rule them all!
> 
> I did see one potential at https://ring.cx/en, but I don't think it
>  handles SMS.  It's open source, though, so there's hope.
> 
> Whatsapp looks interesting as well, but again I don't see anything
>  about SMS.
> 
> Pushbullet (https://www.pushbullet.com/) also looks interesting but
>  it doesn't handle Linux (and some of the reviews in the Play store
>  were pretty bad).
> 
> What are you folks using for SMS messaging?  Have you integrated
> your other accounts into your SMS app?
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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