@sam-liddicott Empathy does not need to support OTR, because *there are no* alternatives that do. Empathy needs to support OTR, because *there are* alternatives that do. It is state of the art to support OTR and Empathy not including it is backward.
Empathy is the instant messenger included the GNOME desktop which ships as a default for many modern distributions, so Empathy is itself a default. An user could educate oneself about this default, notice this backwardness and replace Empathy with a less backward instant messenger. Educating oneself about the security of the installed instant messenger requires but examination that not all users may be able to perform, because of the complexity of the topic. So especially the less computer literate users, who would benefit the most from it will not get covered by OTR. So this boils down to a question of defaults: Should the default be to ship an instant messenger with OTR-support with GNOME desktop? I think recent revelations have shown that "security by default" should have been targeted wherever possible for a long time now. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to empathy in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/296867 Title: empathy needs to support OTR encryption Status in Chat app, and Telepathy user interface: Confirmed Status in One Hundred Paper Cuts: Invalid Status in Telepathy framework - library: Confirmed Status in “empathy” package in Ubuntu: Triaged Status in “libtelepathy” package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Status in “empathy” package in Fedora: Won't Fix Bug description: Binary package hint: empathy Hello, I just tried empathy (the Intrepid version) and it looked very solid and stable. There were a few minor things that could be improved (e.g. automatically resizing the contact list), but that is not the topic here. The reason why I won't switch to empathy from pidgin is the missing OTR support (http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/ ). This is a really important feature because no one should read your messages. There were others with the same idea (links at the bottom). Would be so great if it could support that important encryption standard. Thanks for helping out! Links: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/empathy/+bug/253452/comments/2 http://lists.cypherpunks.ca/pipermail/otr-users/2008-September/001479.html http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16891 To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/empathy/+bug/296867/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
