Jérôme Poisson

"Salut à Toi" is a Python based multi-platforms decentralized communication ecosystem. It is using a standard protocol (XMPP) and offers a lot of features like chat, e2e encryption, files sharing, photo albums, events, (micro)blogging, forums, remote control, tickets, merge-requests and even a decentralized web framework. This talk is an overview and a demonstration of the project, and it will explain how the Python technologies helped.

"Salut à Toi" is a large communication ecosystem based on a daemon/frontends architecture, and available on many platforms (desktop, mobile, web, console). It uses the power of XMPP far beyond instant messaging, and takes profit of many exciting python technologies such as Twisted, Kivy, python-for-android, Jinja2, or Urwid.

This talk will be a quick tour of the project mainly focusing on desktop/mobile frontend and web frontend.

After a brief explanation of the project, the association behind, and its goals, a demo of the desktop/mobile frontend will be done on GNU/Linux and on Android, with features likes: - one2one and group chat with e2e encryption (OTR and OMEMO) - sharing a folder either in P2P or through a server à la Owncloud/Nextcloud, with easy permission handling - remote controlling a VLC instance running on the desktop through the Android app

Then a demo of the web frontend will take place with blogging, events, forums, tickets and merge-requests.

This will be the occasion to have some words on the Python technologies used and how, and why Python has helped a lot.

More details on the project can be found on https://salut-a-toi.org or on the blog of the main developer: https://www.goffi.org.

XMPP is known to be a instant messaging protocol, and is sometime blamed for its extensibility for bad reasons. This talk will try to show how powerful is XMPP, by explaining how we have built many exciting features likes a blog engine, file sharing, the base of a code forge (tickets handlers + merge requests), a universal remote controller and even a decentralized web framework on top of XMPP. All of this (and more) are parts of the Salut à Toi ecosystem.

Lastly we have been hearing more often than not XMPP bashing: XMPP is supposed to be bad because it's old, or XML based, it's not based on web technologies (HTTP, JSON), or there are too many XEPs, etc.

This is unfair and often due to a lack of knowledge or a misunderstanding of the protocol. This talk will try to offer a different view of XMPP by explaining how we have used it in the "Salut à Toi" ecosystem to offer exciting features like: - a blog engine - file sharing (P2P or through a server à la Owncloud/NextCloud), using Jingle - the base of a decentralised code forge (tickets handling and merge-requests) - a universal remote control - forums - events

In Salut à Toi, XMPP has also been used to build a unique decentralized web framework (Libervia web framework). We'll see how XMPP can help in this field thanks to the powerful PubSub technology.

Finally, we'll see how gateways can be used beyond messaging, to, for instance allow XMPP to communicate with other protocols like ActivityPub (the protocol behind Mastodon).

For the Libervia project, we have developed a blogging/microblogging engine based on XMPP and PubSub. This talk explains how we have done, what we can do, and the gain of using XMPP

Blogging technologies are most of time based on centralized website with e-mail validated comments.

XMPP is a set of various technologies, and one of them is “Publish/Subscribe”. We have used this extension and other ones to build a decentralized blogging/microblogging engine.

Using XMPP has many benefits, that will be explained in this talk: - using a standard allow us to communicate with other project (Movim, Live Jabber, Jappix, etc) - comments are using the strong XMPP authentication, no need for email validation - because of this authentication, spamming is more difficult - we can change the software rendering the blog easily - comments/articles are pushed in real-time - articles or comments can be easily linked - third party software manipulation is easy

I'll also explain how some features are managed like tags, private blogging, search, etc.

Libervia is a multi frontend decentralized social network. This talk explain how Python has been a good choice for developing this software.

Building a decentralized communication software is a difficult task. The choice of the technologies to use when you start a new project will have a big impact on its life expectancy, and on the time you'll need to develop features.

We have choosed Python for our development, and we don't regret it. We'll do a feedback of our experience, and specially on:

• Twisted/Wokkel which are in the core of our project (asynchronous framework)
• Pyjamas that we are using to build our web frontend (python -> javascript transpiler)
• Urwid that we use for our console frontend
• Kivy that we use for our desktop/mobile frontend
• standard library modules which saved us a lot of time

and we'll talk about the global benefits to expect by using a popular language like Python.

Architecture and use cases of Salut à Toi, a XMPP client with multi frontends (console ncurses-like, command line interface, desktop, web), with special focus on microblogging.

This talk aims to briefly present the Salut à Toi project and its goals. Salut à Toi is a XMPP client which focus on the whole XMPP stuff, not only instant messaging, and where many frontends use a common backend. The following points will be covered: - global overview of the project - why a multi-frontends client ? - the architecture/technologies used - quick presentation of some features - XMPP as a replacement of traditional e-mail network