GAJIM Usage, XMPP, Possibilities Q

As a non-techie, I would like to know a bit more about using Gajim and XMPP. Accounts could be added for an insular team. However, to allow volunteers, members, or people outside the team to reach you, it is not clear to me how or how to reach and connect with others.

Perhaps Jitsi is a service that makes it easier to communicate without a person being part of the team or setting up an account for them. Or perhaps Matrix or some other service is useful for this, although I haven’t looked closely at Matrix. It would be nice if it were possible to communicate with people who don’t have Gajim as well, something like a public telephone call.

I’m not sure, but it seems like Gajim can somehow communicate with people using services listed as XMPP clients and therefore communicate with the address of those people (whatever the address might look like, I don’t know).

So some questions are:

(1) Would ‘outsiders’ have to download Gajim as well or can they use other services to contact your Gajim acount?
(2) I notice that Gajim does not provide service for MacOs/iOS/Android, even though many people don’t use desktops. Others listed as XMPP clients do - of these, is there one that is recommended, more secure, private or more stable? [I’ve attached a list below at very bottom of clients found]
(2) On Gajim, people can be found by entering the address. Is this only for Gajim addresses? Or can addresses from other services and/or XMPP clients be used?
(3) One the WWW, can Gajim be used to join other discussions that are not exclusively on the May1st server? If so, how, where, or which ones?
(4) Can other platforms be used with Gajim? I am looking online and seeing all these big platforms have dropped XMPP (Facebook, Google).
(5) If there are other chat platforms that can use Gajim - are there instructions online for doing so for any of these? Is it necessary to join the service and sign all the contracts and privacy policies before using Gajim for those other chat platforms?

I did find some discussion of XMPP with respect to Wire, where a few people discussed whether Wire should allow a federated connection. That is interesting, and that is here: Implement XMPP federation · Issue #631 · wireapp/wire-server · GitHub

Here is the list of other XMPP clients that work with MacOS, Android, or iOS. Asterisks were recommended online somewhere for privacy or other reason.

MACos
BeagleIM
Kaidan
Poezio
Psi
Psi+
Profanity
Pade
Spark

iOS
SiskinIM by Tigase, Inc
Jitsi (Apple app)

BOTH MACos & iOS
Astrachat
Monal IM *
Beagle IM (from Siskin IM) *

ANDROID
Bruno the Jabber
Cheogram Android
Conversations*
Kaidan
Libervia
Profanity
StorkIM (fork of Siskin) *
blabber.IM * (better UI than conversations)
monocles chat
yaxim
Jitsi (Google store)
ChatSecure*

BROWSER
Converse.js *
JSXC
Movim *

??? - These may not be XMPP

Delta chat

Hi, XMPP is a protocol and gajim is just one piece of software that can use it. That’s the nice thing about it, any software the supports the XMPP protocol can be used. That includes all the ones listed in your post, including snikket (but not delta or wire which uses a different protocol).

So, if you are running gajim on your desktop or conversations on your phone, you can chat with anyone else regardless of the software they are using as long as their software supports XMPP.

The only problem is that in addition to having the software, you have to have an account. It’s like email that way. Just because you downloaded Thunderbird, doesn’t mean you can send email. You also need a service.

As you point out, you can create accounts via our control panel, but that won’t work for random volunteers or others who might want to chat with you. Unfortunately there isn’t any public free accounts that I I know about like there is with email. The closest is if you buy the conversations app on the Google play store you will get a free @conversations.im account. But I think you have to buy the app.

Like email, XMPP addresses are in the same format. My XMPP handle is jamie@mayfirst.org. And you can plug that into any XMPP client to chat with me.

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Thanks Jamie, that clarifies that the usage is more for a team. I’m going to see if one of the above versions works for an Android or Apple computer as well.

Unfortunately there isn’t any public free accounts that I I know about like there is with email

Most services that support XMPP are free. conversations.im is free, for example, even if you don’t purchase the client (you can even download the client for free using alternative app stores). You could sign up for a conversations.im account with Gajim, or Dino, for example. Other common services that are free include yax.im or chatterboxtown.us, and many more.

Many more free providers are listed on https://providers.xmpp.net/ (though I strongly disagree with aspects of their rating system, so be sure to evaluate on your own and ignore the “A-F” grade ratings they assign).

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??? - These may not be XMPP

All of the clients you listed support the XMPP protocol and signing into arbitrary accounts with the exception of “Jitsi (Google store)”. I’m assuming by this that you mean the meet.jit.si app which is different than the old Jitsi desktop client. This is an app for their video chat service which does use XMPP behind the scenes (for signaling and chat), but does not allow you to connect and chat with arbitrary XMPP accounts unlike the other apps in your list and Delta chat which uses SMTP (email) as its protocol.