[PSF-Community] Python based advanced XMPP client/social network looking for help !

[Goffi]

Hi there,

even if I'm using python for years, I just applied to PSF and subscribed to 
this list, and this seems the right place to talk about our project.

We are working on a free (AGPL v3+), decentralized, encrypted and feature-full 
communication tool (or “social network”) made in Python (technical details 
below).

We are a non-profit association focusing on ethic (see http://salut-a-toi.org/social_contract.html), and the project is based on XMPP. But XMPP is 
not only about instant messaging, we also work a log on 
blogging/microblogging, file sharing, and this kind of stuff.

We have just launched a small crowdfunding campaign to port our project to 
Android (and make a new desktop frontend at the same time) by using Kivy and 
its Python for Android/Buildozer tools: 
http://www.arizuka.com/en/projects/libervia .

We are looking for help to: get some visibility (technical people know us in 
France because we attend a lot of free software events, but not elsewhere), 
get help for the code, and succeed the crowdfunding campaign. I hope I'm in 
the right place to talk about this.

TECHNICAL DETAILS:

We are on a backend/frontend architecture, the backend being based on Twisted, 
the frontends communicate using D-Bus (or potentially any IPC). We have a Web, 
CLI, and console frontend, we 	used to have a desktop one based on wxWidgets 
(wxPython) but we have deprecated it (we will replace it by the Kivy 
frontend).

We are Python 2.7 because we use Twisted, but as you probably know there are 
progress in Twisted port to Python 3, so we hope to be able to port the 
project to Python 3 in 2016.

Because we use D-Bus, each frontend can be made in any language, but we have 
made all of them in Python so far (except one draft Qt one in C++).

The CLI frontend use argparse,  and we are probably are on the way to have the 
most advanced XMPP CLI client.

The console frontend is based on Urwid, and modal (inspired from vi/vim).

The Web frontend is 100% python too because we are using Pyjamas for Python => 
JS transcompilation. But as you may known there have been some huge issues 
with Pyjamas, and the project is now dead (we have tried to revive it without 
success), so we are now thinking about porting it to Brython in 2016.

We are pushing XMPP, and we are among the pioneer (with Movim and Jappix) in 
microblogging implementation with XMPP. We have written XEP (XEP-0355 and 
XEP-0356) to implement what we need, and we are working on other ones.

We also work on the server side with a PubSub component, a directory, and this 
kind of things.

The project is *very* large, well advanced (started in 2008), and we have 
overcame the major issues we had with XMPP, next release should start to be 
very useful (a full decentralized blogging engine). We have a lot of features 
an try to do experimentation (e.g.: http://www.goffi.org/post/2014/02/18/A-universal-remote-for-your-softwares ).

This is a unique tool in Python world and in free software world in general. 
But we have really difficulties to get visibility or support, that's why I'm 
asking some help here. I hope this long message is a good introduction.

Our website: http://salut-a-toi.org
web frontend demo: http://www.libervia.org (beware: outdated version, and 
everything is empty at the beginning, you need to add some contacts to test)
our campaign for desktop/Android frontend: 
http://www.arizuka.com/en/projects/libervia

Thanks a lot!
Jérôme Poisson aka Goffi