[XMPP/Jabber] Support encryption, file transfer and groups

Feature Requests
21

Sorry to create confusion all is speculative due to inexplicably nothing happening in terms of moving the subject of this post forward (integrated XMPP with encryption & full file transfer etc..).

Explanation of my reference to “SailJAIL”

Inspired by the word “Jail” and the idea that it brings in light of Jolla’s past business failures and h ickups (possibly politically enforced) and the speculation about “glass ceilings” that even the arrogant as resourceful Nokia Mobile devision hit its stubborn head against on the way to dream Linux Camera Phone with HW Keyboard land.

I was if you permit theorizing a possibility where Sailfish OS creators are aware of a “no-go-area” like for example out of the box integrated full featured XMPP & related protocols fully “Sailjail” and Sailfish OS interface / privacy standard compliant. Hence the avoidance of XMPP. Increadible that a 3rd party S1P (SIP app) does not even access the contacts due to “Sailjail” restrictions. Why not just disable the 5G modem for security?

This because at some point a rational explanation is hard to be found given the main device is a “phone” and it needs to stand out and attract wide user base.

I have spent enough years observing Sailfish OS from a user’s perspective able to know first hand that after 12 years -more than half of the lifetime years of the potential large fresh user base- Sailfish remains hard to recommend or promote without burning one’s fingers.

Knowledgeable Sailfish experts on fora -helpful as they are- dropping in with advice on how to circumvent the half working “app” for XMPP only help to illustrate this situation.

22

Things like SIP and XMPP have become even more niche these days than they were in 2013, which is why there are so few good apps available. We have three or four Telegram apps for this reason, we are not getting paid to develop them and usually do it for personal reasons, or because we got fed up with the situation (as with SIP) and decided to take the matter into our own hands. :grin:

23

Ok, I think I understand. And in this case, I think you needn’t be worried. Sailjail is an app sandboxing mechanism, preventing apps from getting data or features they have no business using. It is not the locked-down and verified by Google tool.

The fact that XMPP support has remained below modern expectations is a matter of priorities and limited resources, rather than evil intent IMHO. This can be fixed.

I don’t know any details of (the lack of) s1p integration, Maybe the s1p dev preferred to keep a separate contact list, maybe address book integration wasn’t available at the time, maybe the Sailfish People app doesn’t have a suitable field for SIP number.

I’d speculate that this can also be fixed, either by adding those features, or adding Address book permissions to s1p’s Sailjail profile, or both. (I don’t use it, so haven’t spent any time finding out.)

I can see this too, even if I’m only onboard since 7-8 years. Still, SailfishOS is the most polished, most feature complete alternate phone OS. (Not considering Androids in different hats.) It is becoming better over time.

You are misinterpreting the discussion. SailKaidan wasn’t working and temporarily disabling Sailjail was suggested as a way to find out if this was due to lacking permissions. This is known to be the case for many older apps. The person trying out SailKaidan didn’t want to do that, which is entirely reasonable.

Do note that Sailjail sandboxing can be finely tweaked, not just disabled, which means it might be possible to set just the permissions SailKaidan needs. Also to contribute those settings to the SailKaidan project.

There is also current efforts to get a newer Qt for Sailfish apps, and Kaidan (not the port) is one of those apps that may become available as a result.

XMPP is pretty mature and far from dead. I’d mention Conversations and Dino as high-quality apps, but I agree that we don’t have a good, native XMPP app. I hope that will change, as I think XMPP is the nicest decentralized chat I have tried and I have my friends and family using it.

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24

At least my view to SFOS is as alternative to bigtech. And i am trying also strictly avoid Whatsapp and co. I am using XMPP and Matrix in Android. Both are not possible now on SFOS. But exactly this would be the important plus point für many users, to habe also for chat alternative solution.

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25

It’s a really sad state of affairs as basic xmpp was always part of sfos, hell even some servers have still howto’s for sfos:

1080×2520 428 KB

But can’t get it to work now (you’d get a ‘presence’ menu option in settings where you could set green/away/etc status once an xmpp account was added and active, should jolla maybe opensource this next so we can bring xmpp back, it trumps all the cool kids stuff like telegram/signal/whatsapp/matrix, selfhosting snikket and using android monocles, it’s as simple as it can get)

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26

@Demonia For Matrix, there is Sailtrix or Hydrogen available on SFOS.

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27

And they break all the time, I tried to set up a matrix room(channel?) for me and 3 tech savvy friends (1 iOS, 2 androids, 1 sfos), we spent a week trying the cool kids emoji handshake until we gave up and I just hosted a snikket instance on my old laptop, worked from start and no issues since, matrix is just… Worse than xmpp
EDIT: and the biggest irony is it was the android clients that had problems connecting, the sailtrix emoji handshake worked with iOS also managed to get verified with hydrogen with the iOS guy and one android, the remaining android guy would never get the request and his requests never came through, it really felt as if matrix was sabotaged, like even pgp is easier to accept on first use… Nooo wait for the new req that never happens

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28

But just for trivial use. Not comparebal with elements, schildichat or cinny. Cinny in UT is even a lot more comfortable, useful.

I do like using both xmpp and matrix. Nothing else except sms, for messaging.

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Hydrogen is just repackaged element, no idea about the rest but who in their sane minds breaks backwards compatibility over and over so that ppl just can’t shake their emojis, being generous: zoomers just need to reinvent stuff that works for decades, tinfoil hat: yeah the matrix guys are breaking it so it won’t get wide adoption as all ppl just run away from it and end up back on discord
Edit: like seriously add even a tiny blockchain of pubkeys like twister, the zoomer emoji thing is just broken, it’s worse than rewrite in rust, it’s pushing their own crypto standard because yay emojis

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Yes, exactly. This is, why it needs to be clean and “full” xmpp Integration. Without all tgat zoomer SH…t

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31

I did a bit of work on libs during that Kaidan release from @ron282 and went so far as to get libqxmpp and others into chum

Show sailfishos:chum / libqxmpp - SailfishOS Open Build Service

This was part of another client from ron282 called shmong Show sailfishos:chum:testing / shmong - SailfishOS Open Build Service

I’m not sure what the state of those are, and don’t have time till next year to look at it, but if someone chips in, could resurrect the effort. Or maybe it’s easier to get @piggz to do it :slight_smile:

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32

Not working well all that workarounds, or maybe it is on myself, maybe installed something not right. I still thinks, the full XMPP implementation should be part of the system :slight_smile:

Otherwise it should be maintained app in the Jolla store. Not some 5 workarounds around of an old and not more supported app

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33

The problem is utility and time.

I used to use xmpp both privately and in organizations. So I spent time on apps and even servers. But I have no use of xmpp and maintain other chat services. So, that means the number of users/developers has to increase to get someone behind the effort. I don’t have the time.

As it stands, XMPP has been sidelined, a pity to be sure, but a fact. XMPP is not just an app in harbour, it has system integration. But that is aged. What we could hope for is that jolla open sources all the xmpp system integration code so that could be updated. This could be brought up at the next community meeting. EDIT: Community meeting on 15th January 2026 - #5 by poetaster

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34

No offense, but I have been hearing ideas like this for years (the same with SIP), back when we had far more users and seeing someone use XMPP was much more common.

The sad truth is that if you want XMPP, you have to develop it yourself and not wait for Jolla. They are not going to spend time on something that is irrelevant to the vast majority of users, especially when they cannot even keep something as basic and essential as the browser up to date to a level that prevents it from being blocked by half the sites on the internet.

35

This is irrelevant because it is broken, old and not promoted. If you would say for new users with new Jolla Phone, hey, people, with this new phone and new version of SailfishOS, you can avoid to use any kind of big data services, even messaging with voice and video calls can be done directly with preinstalled software (or with integrated software). I think, more people would use it and of cause more people would even know about that. This can be a plus point in the marketing offensive.

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It is available on Android, and yet few people use it. I do not doubt it would be cool to have it on SFOS, but they have to ask themselves whether the juice is worth the squeeze when there are dozens of other issues on Sailfish to fix that would affect far more people.

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37

It is crazy. New people are coming to Jolla, pre ordering the new phone, join the forum and try to share they’d needs, ideas and questions. The answers from most experienced forum members are mostly like: guys please stop to think positive…

Frustrating from beginning. Without any kind of optimism and looking forward there is no way to the future fur sailfish is.

Is off topic and can be removed, but it has to be spoken out.

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38

I am sorry if that appears that way. What I am seeing are new users coming into the forum, asking the same questions that have been asked for over a decade, coming up with the same ideas that have failed for over a decade, and making demands like “Jolla should do this, Jolla should do that” with no regard for realities such as resources, funding, or long-term vision. They try to uproot everything that has been established and has kept Sailfish alive for over a decade in favor of ideas like, “Why not just compile Plasma apps instead of Silica? They have more apps,” with no consideration for usability, etc.

I am not accusing you personally of any of that. It is just that every sudden influx of new users with no understanding of the past brings up things like this, every time, and we have seen it over and over since 2013.

9 Likes
39

With open sourcing many components and plugins maybe we could ask Jolla to open source the xmpp integration and the missing features could be integrated by the community and used in future releases?

But, nevertheless, someone skilled would have to step in and implement the encryption etc. But with seeing integrations opened up there might be ways…

(@unmaintained general question: with the available examples, would it be possible (from a tecnical POV) to build a “SIP account” living next to mail etc. in the base SFOS system or are there numerous features and code pices propriotary and missing for such a target?)

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I think someone tried that a few years ago but it didn’t work:

The section how to set it all up was on https://together.jolla.com/question/415/sip-voip-native-integration/ but the old forum seems to be gone.