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I’m sure there have been many calls for a chat function, and remember talk about it. Any progress? Is Diaspora* on its way, or stagnating? We need it more than ever, with facebook censorship growing…
I am not sure of what is asked, but XMPP has been supported for some times (since I started using Diaspora* at least, I think) and the podupti.me service has XMPP in the list of services offered.
There is a chat feature available for Diaspora in the form of a JSXC client, but this is not polished although it is functional, so it has not yet been merged into the main Diaspora code base. It is up to individual podmins whether they wish to activate it, and will always remain so. The Pod Uptime link above shows a list of some of the pods which have activated this feature.
JSXC does seem like a good choice.
Does the XMPP icon 
indicate an active JSXC client?
Does the XMPP icon indicate an active JSXC client?
I believe so.
It is up to individual podmins whether they wish to activate it, and will always remain so.
What do you mean by “always” , Is it like written on a wall? 
Uh? Diaspora is distributed, which means things can’t be enforced from the centre. Each podmin can run their pod in whatever way they like, within the terms of use. They decide whether they want to enable extras, such as cross-posting to Twitter, Tumblr, etc. It has to be left to the decision of each podmin whether to install and run a JSXC server, which is necessary for the chat feature to work. Or do you propose to force podmins who don’t have the resources to run such a server, or who don’t wish to, to close their pod?
The feature will be available to users who wish to use it. Once account migration has been implemented, it will be easy for users to move to another pod if their podmin chooses not to implement chat.
Or do you propose to force podmins who don’t have the resources to run such a server, or who don’t wish to, to close their pod?
Not my intention. I just don’t want Chat to remain in Beta Mode forever 
Podmins having choice to implement it is nothing to do with beta mode. At the moment they’re warned that it’s in beta and that if they install it they do so at their own risk. Once it has been finished and integrated into Diaspora’s main code base, however, podmins should still have the choice whether to activate the chat feature on their pod.
It has to be left to the decision of each podmin whether to install and run a JSXC server, which is necessary for the chat feature to work.
JSXC is not the server, it is the front-end. The server is Vines and both of them are installed as dependencies by default in 0.6. The only thing that the podmin has to do is to activate the chat in the configuration file.
Chat is already running on joindiapora.com
perhaps as a way to integrate this with other services
https://www.bitlbee.org/main.php/news.r.html seems to fit part the gap here or could be used to glue things together, again we need a solid diaspora API, which I understand is being worked on.
As it is also GPL and free software we can use that as we wish. If we can tap in to existing tools / solutions it may make less work for the developers.
@augier actually, Vines has been dropped. Prosody is now the new default in the develop branch.
So, to summarize:
- Yes, there is a chat feature in diaspora*, available even in the stable branch
- No, it is not considered as stable yet and there is still work to do
- Yes, you can activate it if you’re a podmin, or ask your podmin to do so. But we still do not recommend to activate it at the moment, as it is definitely not stable
- You can follow progress about the chat feature on the JSXC fork by diaspora*
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