4 ms·

Is this system of "API keys" why Pidgin doesn't handle all these new IM protocols, and why there's no other good old-fashioned multi-protocol clients for them (

Is this system of "API keys" why Pidgin doesn't handle all these new IM protocols, and why there's no other good old-fashioned multi-protocol clients for them (that I'm aware of)?

keldaris 9y ago
Because reverse engineering some IM protocols is far from trivial. Skype, in particular, is a nightmare of obfuscation, as I understand (second hand knowledge from having wanted to replace it with Pidgin in the past, I haven't tried reverse engineering it myself).
- Sniffnoy 9y ago
  Skype I know is infamously hard, but I'm wondering about the more general case -- are the problems there similar to the problems with Skype, or are they due to something else?
  - keldaris 9y ago
    As far as I know, they're a combination of it being hard work and there just not being enough of a qualified developer community around Pidgin etc. to put in the effort required. I think people generally underestimate the sheer amount of work involved in reverse engineering an IM protocol, even one that's not particularly well obfuscated.
    - jopsen 9y ago
      Back in the day when protocols ran over HTTP it was also a lot easier for amateurs to pick up wireshark. But if we know that the company is going to respond by changing the protocol. Then who wants to spend time reverse engineering it?
      - Sniffnoy 9y ago
        That hardly seems like much of an explanation. Look at the old protocols Pidgin and other clients of the time (e.g. Trillian) spoke -- AOL, MSN, Yahoo... those didn't run over HTTP. More importantly, the companies did respond by changing the protocols; the client-writers kept up all the same. So that's not something that's different between then and now.
    - Sniffnoy 9y ago
      But what about other projects? Back in the day there were multiple multi-protocol clients. Pidgin (or rather Gaim back then), Trillian, and others; now there's... maybe Franz, as cosmie mentions? Simply saying "Pidgin kind of died off" doesn't seem like enough of an explanation here; why aren't there more such projects popping up?
      - user5994461 9y ago
        They never worked properly. It takes years to develop and it's broken anytime the owner will change anything in their implementation. Even if you had the ultimate multi chat clients, noone cares about it. People use the official client that works just fine.
        quotemstr 9y ago
        And you've hit the nail on the head: there's just a lot less _demand_ for multi-protocol clients these days. Official clients are much better than they were in the 1990s. Like piracy: undesired use of a protocol is a service problem, one that modern IM clients are actually addressing.
cosmie 9y ago
Franz[1] is the closest thing I’ve found to a client around newer IM protocols. [1] https://meetfranz.com/ https://meetfranz.com/
- Sniffnoy 9y ago
  Huh, interesting. Its website isn't very informative though. I can't find a list of protocols, annoyingly.
  - cosmie 9y ago
    It has a plugin architecture. Most of the core services it supports are listed in the Franz Plugin repo[1]. Note that it's not just about IM protocols, but rather a one-stop messaging app in general (so supports things like Gmail). And there are quite a few third-party plugins floating around, as well. And a good number that haven't been ported from Franz 4 to Franz 5. [1] https://github.com/meetfranz/plugins#example-recipes https://github.com/meetfranz/plugins#example-recipes
    - quotemstr 9y ago
      Huh? Based on the code, it looks like this thing just embeds stock web clients in some kind of webview and uses a little bit of JS injection to extract message counts. It's nowhere close to actually reverse engineering any protocol.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- gsich 9y ago
  Includes a Monero miner.
  - cosmie 9y ago
    Interesting. I hadn't realized that before. In the Windows version, there's no reference to it anywhere. And I no longer have a Mac to check that out (although it did trigger the dedicated GPU in the MBP, I attributed that to the FB Messenger plugin). In looking for references to the miner, people seem to mention Rambox[1] as an alternative. I can't say much about that as I just came across it, but it looks promising as well. [1] http://rambox.pro/ http://rambox.pro/

Is this system of "API keys" why Pidgin doesn't handle all these new IM protocols, and why there's no other good old-fashioned multi-protocol clients for them (that I'm aware of)?

keldaris 9y ago

Because reverse engineering some IM protocols is far from trivial. Skype, in particular, is a nightmare of obfuscation, as I understand (second hand knowledge from having wanted to replace it with Pidgin in the past, I haven't tried reverse engineering it myself).

Sniffnoy 9y ago
Skype I know is infamously hard, but I'm wondering about the more general case -- are the problems there similar to the problems with Skype, or are they due to something else?
- keldaris 9y ago
  As far as I know, they're a combination of it being hard work and there just not being enough of a qualified developer community around Pidgin etc. to put in the effort required. I think people generally underestimate the sheer amount of work involved in reverse engineering an IM protocol, even one that's not particularly well obfuscated.
  - jopsen 9y ago
    Back in the day when protocols ran over HTTP it was also a lot easier for amateurs to pick up wireshark. But if we know that the company is going to respond by changing the protocol. Then who wants to spend time reverse engineering it?
    - Sniffnoy 9y ago
      That hardly seems like much of an explanation. Look at the old protocols Pidgin and other clients of the time (e.g. Trillian) spoke -- AOL, MSN, Yahoo... those didn't run over HTTP. More importantly, the companies did respond by changing the protocols; the client-writers kept up all the same. So that's not something that's different between then and now.
  - Sniffnoy 9y ago
    But what about other projects? Back in the day there were multiple multi-protocol clients. Pidgin (or rather Gaim back then), Trillian, and others; now there's... maybe Franz, as cosmie mentions? Simply saying "Pidgin kind of died off" doesn't seem like enough of an explanation here; why aren't there more such projects popping up?
    - user5994461 9y ago
      They never worked properly. It takes years to develop and it's broken anytime the owner will change anything in their implementation. Even if you had the ultimate multi chat clients, noone cares about it. People use the official client that works just fine.
      - quotemstr 9y ago
        And you've hit the nail on the head: there's just a lot less _demand_ for multi-protocol clients these days. Official clients are much better than they were in the 1990s. Like piracy: undesired use of a protocol is a service problem, one that modern IM clients are actually addressing.

cosmie 9y ago

Franz[1] is the closest thing I’ve found to a client around newer IM protocols. [1] https://meetfranz.com/ https://meetfranz.com/

Sniffnoy 9y ago
Huh, interesting. Its website isn't very informative though. I can't find a list of protocols, annoyingly.
- cosmie 9y ago
  It has a plugin architecture. Most of the core services it supports are listed in the Franz Plugin repo[1]. Note that it's not just about IM protocols, but rather a one-stop messaging app in general (so supports things like Gmail). And there are quite a few third-party plugins floating around, as well. And a good number that haven't been ported from Franz 4 to Franz 5. [1] https://github.com/meetfranz/plugins#example-recipes https://github.com/meetfranz/plugins#example-recipes
  - quotemstr 9y ago
    Huh? Based on the code, it looks like this thing just embeds stock web clients in some kind of webview and uses a little bit of JS injection to extract message counts. It's nowhere close to actually reverse engineering any protocol.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
gsich 9y ago
Includes a Monero miner.
- cosmie 9y ago
  Interesting. I hadn't realized that before. In the Windows version, there's no reference to it anywhere. And I no longer have a Mac to check that out (although it did trigger the dedicated GPU in the MBP, I attributed that to the FB Messenger plugin). In looking for references to the miner, people seem to mention Rambox[1] as an alternative. I can't say much about that as I just came across it, but it looks promising as well. [1] http://rambox.pro/ http://rambox.pro/