Re: Google Hangouts support

[Simon McVittie <smcv collabora com>]

On Wed, 18 Oct 2017 at 11:42:40 +0300, pecisk gmail com wrote:
> Is there any interest/desire to see Google Hangouts support in Empathy and
> Telepathy? Or as Telepathy is on it's way out it is no interest?

Telepathy can't have Google Hangouts support unless someone
reverse-engineers the protocol (which is closed/proprietary, if I
understand correctly) well enough to write a "connection manager"
(protocol backend) for it. The design of Telepathy means that Empathy
would immediately get basic support for any protocol where a connection
manager exists; but writing that connection manager is a significant
amount of work.

The general migration of user-base from open protocols (XMPP, SIP)
to proprietary protocols with no good open-source implementation, but
broad enough browser support that nobody has a very compelling reason
to do the reverse-engineering and write one (Hangouts, Facebook Chat)
is a large part of why Telepathy is on the way out.

Regards,
    smcv, former Telepathy maintainer