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> Isn't this going to kill features that only some apps have or offer? What if one day Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp want to implement something "different" that

> Isn't this going to kill features that only some apps have or offer? What if one day Signal, Telegram or WhatsApp want to implement something "different" that could make messaging better but this policy is making things harder to implement because it would be impossible to make it interoperate with other messaging apps? Just open the standard/api/protocol, document it, and it'll get integrated into pidgin or some other alternative within a few days. Currently it's not a problem of not having apps trying to integrate protocols, but protocol designers intentionally locking other apps out of the ecosystem.

_cenw 4y ago
But also, you generally want to iterate faster than "write a new spec and wait 2 years for implementations to support half of it". The alternative to which is just implementing it and hoping the other party can somehow make sense of it. Emoji reactions being supported by only a few activitypub implementations is an example of it. This is incidentally the reason moxie cited for not making Signal federated.
- int_19h 4y ago
  Why "hoping"? Just bake the ability to advertise and query for capabilities into the protocol. This is an issue that has been solved many times before. And yes, it might mean that only one client would support a shiny new feature for a while. But that's exactly the situation with iMessage, s/for a while/forever/.