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Instant Messaging, commonly referred to as simply '''chat''' has a long history on the Internet. Today, due to major advancements in all aspects of technology, the distinction between [[chat]], [[video conferencing]] and [[voice]] communications is blurred.
It's remarkable that [[IRC]] still exists after all these years. Mostly because it's free as in freedom, and 'simple' in terms of features which makes it so interoperable and flexible. It has it's limitations to be sure, and quite a while ago I thought there were things like Jabber/XMPP that would take over because of the capabilities of the protocols <ref>[[wp:Comparison of instant messaging protocols]]</ref> were maturing at the same time that legal issues were forcing interoperability.
But today there is no single "killer app" for Instant Messaging <ref>Prism-break.org has a great directory of free software including a category on Instant Messaging: https://prism-break.org/en/categories/gnu-linux/#instant-messaging</ref>. (The same is true for [[video conferencing|Video Conferencing]], but that's another topic.) By "killer app" I mean a platform that teams can either join (distributed) or setup for themselves; a game-changer and leader, like the Apache HTTPD server. I do not mean a FLOSS client, such as pidgin, that can allow you to connect to a proprietary network -- because the emphasis is on what platform can the whole team share?
I just learned that the [[CiviCRM]] team is using "Mattermost" <ref>https://civicrm.org/blog/michael-mcandrew/chat-infrastructure-for-civicrm</ref> which has a compelling story behind it <ref>http://www.mattermost.org/why-we-made-mattermost-an-open-source-slack-alternative/</ref> and is for the time being partly open. Sadly, it could go the way of countless other 'open source' projects due to the fact that it's licensed under the Apache license. Basically, Mattermost could abandon the community edition once significant revenue makes the community version irrelevant to their business.
As an aside, I don't quite understand why they are offering the community edition under a dual Apache/GNU Affero license. <ref>httphttps://wwwgithub.com/mattermost.org/why-we-made-mattermost-an-open-source-slack-alternativeplatform/blob/master/LICENSE.txt</ref>
Will Mattermost become the ground-breaking leader in free chat? What do you think? What do you use for team chat? Are there any FLOSS projects that are well developed, but not owned? [https://jitsi.org/ Jitsi] is/was apparently pretty complete, but is now owned by Atlassian (which means watch 'features' disappear or new 'features' which make it tightly coupled with other Atlassian products).
