As I understand it, GOA connects you directly to various accounts, whether
it's FB or Jabber.
GOA provides a centralized service that allows a set of online accounts to be
configured for use with core GNOME applications. In UX terms, GOA provides a
static list of online accounts that can be setup by users (through the Online
Accounts panel in System Settings). These accounts can then be used by core
GNOME applications.
From Gnome Wiki: https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeOnlineAccounts
> While third party applications can access the accounts setup through GOA,
this is not its explicit goal, nor does GOA set out to enable third party
applications to add online accounts of their own. There are several reasons
for this:
Third-party applications should be able to identify themselves to online
services for the purposes of branding and tracking.
Third-party applications shouldn't be able to identify themselves under a
generic OS or distributor key - this would be misleading as to what is
actually accessing the account, and would prevent there from being specific
contracts of trust between users and applications who access their data.
It would prevent users from blocking specific applications from accessing
their account (should an application sandboxing framework come into effect).
===
From https://developer.gnome.org/goa/stable/
> Providers
GoaExchangeProvider — A provider for Microsoft Exchange servers
GoaGoogleProvider — A provider for Google
GoaMediaServerProvider — A provider for Media Server
GoaWindowsLiveProvider — A provider for Windows Live accounts
GoaFacebookProvider — A provider for Facebook
GoaFlickrProvider — A provider for Flickr
GoaFoursquareProvider — A provider for Foursquare
GoaTelepathyProvider — A provider for Telepathy
=====
gnome-online-accounts is present in Trisquel Packages, and perhaps included
in the GNOME edition of Trisquel as it's free software.
Perhaps if you don't use GOA, it doesn't do anything and so is harmless. I
have no idea.
