Alternative to Jami Messenger

I'm surrprised that Jami was runring on your iPhone. I secretly installed Jami on a friend's Android phone and made a call from my iPone, but Jami never even found his account.
How about Signal? I haven't used it, but at least it seems to work.

> Can someone recommend a GNU complient messenger thats available on all popular OS both mobile and desktop?

I doubt it. This is quite a recurrent topic in this forum, so we would not have missed it.

There is only one I can think about, but I cannot be sure it meets your criteria. What is a "GNU complient messenger" for iOS or Android supposed to look like exactly?

Someone posted this: https://trisquel.info/en/forum/jami-vs-wire-vs-other-programs#comment-157600, and they seem quite knowledgeable about messengers.

That said, I'd rather scrap a proprietary mobile OS than scrap Jami because said proprietary OS is making it look like a vampire. Who's the sucker, really? "But remember: as a user of a non-free program, you're a victim. Not a culprit" (Richard Stallman, https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/free-software-awards, around 37:00).

Also: "Sometimes, defending freedom requires a sacrifice. Not watching a certain movie is not a big sacrifice. Anyone can do that. The movie is probably crap anyway. I say that simply because most Hollywood movies are crap. There are exceptions, but they are so rare" (id., around 49:00).

Nobody caring about freedom or privacy would seriously recommend Signal:

https://www.wired.com/story/signal-foundation-whatsapp-brian-acton
https://freedombone.net/faq.html#org96b7e85

> What is a "GNU complient messenger" for iOS or Android supposed to look like exactly?

Lanun is right about asking this - it is difficult to advise without knowing the details. You used word "messenger". Does that mean you don't care about videocnoferencing functionality? In such case the number of options grows.

One "messenger" (actually protocol) that comes to mind is Matrix[1]. Its implementations are free software and federated (as opposed to peer-to-peer). There are no video conversations in it AFAIK but you can have audio talks. It has clients for Android and iOS, as well as web-based, so it can be accessed even by those useds imprisoned by crApple and other tyrant device vendors. Also, there seem to be Matrix packages in Debian repo, so you shouldn't need any third-party package manager to install it. Bad sides? Some Matrix instances might use reCaptcha. You should be careful to register on one that doesn't.

Of course, there can be many more messengers with similar functionality. I just described the one that I heard most about and that seems to be quite popular.

It just came to my mind that you might have meant you want to chat with Jami users from other program than Jami. If that's your goal, then I don't think there are tools for it.

[1] https://matrix.org/

Look what I just found. Two people from Ring/Jami landed at Libre Planet 2016, and a stealth Trisquel agent managed to record their secret talk:

https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/take-control-of-your-communication-with-ring

That talk happened five years ago, and Ring has now become Jami, but they still seem to really want to do many things, in addition to their many Jami clients. I think the work they are currently doing on OpenDHT and Ethereum is going to be crucial for a whole range of applications. Jami itself might be second priority only. That would explain many things. That's only a guess, though. My next guess would be that Jami is in turn basing too much of its operations, and hence too much of its development work, on the DHT, to become a polished and stable app any time soon. But again, that's only a guess. There is also a passing mention of the IoT...about remotely controlling a robot in a mine in Northern Canada...They might also simply be hampering the whole thing in a quest for technological feat. Anyway, that video and the OP just sent me back to seriously considering the current options again.

Jitsi Meet used to be a good option if you wanted occasional audio/video calls plus chat, I just noticed that they now have mobile clients, which might sound like good news for you. However, I also noticed that Jitsi® is now a registered trademark of a certain 8x8, Inc., which talks about "Introducing Experience Communications as a Service (XCaaS)" on its front page. Sounds gloomy, to say the least.

Another option you might possibly be tempted by is Telegram, their GNU/Linux client is GPL'd (if this is what you meant by "GNU compliance") but does not offer E2EE, and the usual reservations about trusting a centralized network (and linking account to mobile number) also apply here. Same for Wire. So I would certainly give a chance to Matrix before going to any of these two, at least it was designed for federation.

The recent developments on the Jitsi side are not overly positive, although the Jitsi Meet instances currently available might be able to use a forked version if the new parent company starts moving astray. My experience to date with Jitsi Meet has been great on any of the instances I have chosen from either https://jitsi.github.io/handbook/docs/community/community-instances or https://framatalk.org/accueil/en/info.

All in all, I'd stick to my previous recommendation:

1. ditch the proprietary mobile OS and keep Jami, or even easier, ditch the evil mobile devices. Some settings might keep the battery leak less of a problem, but then I'd bet that connectivity would decrease proportionally. Also, I understand that you might not be ready yet to ditch communication with your friends or family altogether because of a messaging app. Hence:

2. Jitsi Meet, using Abrowser on GNU/Linux and their mobile clients on their respective platforms. Or possibly:

3. Matrix, if it is not too much of a hurdle for them to create an account, etc. on a given matrix server and configure a client accordingly. Matrix has also its problems, but I have no idea whether stability/availability/latency improved much recently. These things can change really fast after long time of slow progress. It is also still quite centralized, although again it is built to be federated. If you are going for Matrix, you might want to read this thread first: https://trisquel.info/en/forum/matrix-client. Two GNU/Linux clients are recommended here: https://trisquel.info/en/forum/matrix-client#comment-154981.

4. protometachattoo, running on my new universal p2p protocol. It is still too much of a work in progress for any of its components to be disclosed yet, even to myself, but I have good hope it will eventually comply with Drew DeVaut's check list for the next chat app: https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/07/The-next-chat-app.html. When the next installment of the cosmos comes to shape.

> So it seems Jami is getting close to getting scrapped in our group ask
> it just has far to many issues for daily use. Can someone recommend
> a GNU compliant messenger that's available on all popular OS both
> mobile and desktop?

The instant messenger market is very bad. Personally I am very excited
about Jami but I don't think it's there yet that it can be recommended
to my non-tech savvy friends.

I used to push Signal a lot, and I regret the time I used to it. It's a
*vendor lock-in* and Signal devs don't care about software freedom. So
I'd recommend to avoid it.

I think matrix and XMPP are steps in right direction. But in my case I
can't convince my peers to use them yet.

So I settled for Telegram, here's my reasons:

1) Very user friendly and full of features, that normal people may
like. For people who are used to proprietary messengers with lot of
features, they'll find that Telegram is usable.

2) Even though it depends on a central server, it's possible to bridge
it with Matrix (unlike Signal).

3) Many people argue that Telegram's server side source code is
proprietary, but that doesn't matter to *you* as the user, because you
are not running it on *your computer*. Telegram is running the server
side code on their computer and they have all the freedoms because they
are the one who wrote it.

4) The client is free software and the QT based client is natively
available in most of the GNU/Linux distros, Even the GNU FSDG compliant
distros like Parabola and Guix. Contrary to this, Signal has a electron
based client that FSDG compliant distros can't have them on their
repo. Also the mobile client is available on F-droid. And it's regularly
updated.

5) Mobile clients support E2EE (i.e., secrete chats).

6) I've heard that people even don't need to install the official
version and there's plugin available that can work with Pidgin (I am
surely misspelling the name) messenger.

Personally I have seen that in action with the Emacs version of Telegram
called telega.el package (and it also supports e2e encryption).

--
Abhisek Paira
E34E 825B 979E EB9F 8505 F80E E93D 353B 7740 0709
"There is no system but GNU, and Linux is one of its kernels."

> My brother has sent me a screen shot shoing Jami is typically using 67% of the battery in his iPhone 10 which he says is simpley unacceptable.

I just realized the reason. Jami by default makes connections to its p2p network in the background. This way each user helps sustain the network. Unfortunately, these background connections cause high power drain, which is especially easy to notice on mobile devices. Perhaps it is possible to configure the amount of traffic Jami generates in the background? However, as lanun noticed, it might also affect the connectiviy.

> My next guess would be that Jami is in turn basing too much of its operations, and hence too much of its development work, on the DHT, to become a polished and stable app any time soon.

It would be nice if federation was an option here. So that a geek could run a Jami node on a personal server and have all the friends connect through that node instead of participating directly in p2p. And I think that's not impossible to program. But probably not worth doing anyway, as there are more daring issues freesw movement has to solve

Have you considered XMPP or Matrix ? There are iOS clients for both on the Apple app store.

Ive settled for XMPP running OMEMO however I've had to make some compromises, there seems to be a limit on the file size that can be transferred - OK for pics. Ive never really been one for voip calls but seems not all clients support VOIP.

Where XMPP seem to shine is synchronizing usage over many clients, you can almost pickup a conversation on a different client.

The down side is its not that user friendly, let me explain, not all clients on all platforms support the same features, Dino on Linux does not support VOIP, Monocles on android supports VOIP.

Moreover apps need a bit of setting up as well as account creation on an XMPP server. Bread and butter for a seasoned user but not always noob friendly.

That said, once setup and OMEMO enabled its easy to use.

SFLinux has released a new version of Jami (codename ‘Maloya’) earlier this month. In their announcement, they claim to have improved battery consumption on iOS. Could you check if the improvements work for any of your buddies?