Comment by progx
7 years ago
Messenger are not easier than email, only when 2 ore more communicate on one topic.
But with email you communicate with one or more people about many topcis.
To archieve the same structure in a messenger, you must create several discussions. So messenger are not the holy grail of communication, that is why people still use email.
We need an email user interface with open messenger protocols under the hood for secure communication and usability. None of the current messenger offer that.
For a proof of concept, I've made a couple of years ago a "gateway" which was launching a local IMAP server in my XMPP client. This way you could use any MUA you like while taking profit of XMPP infrastructure (JID — XMPP identifier — are similar to email addresses) and its encryption (OMEMO can be used with that for instance). In other words, you could send messages from Thunderbird (or Gajim) to KMail by using only XMPP protocol (and thanks to IMAP Push, you got notifications immediately).
Good point, private channels are the new discussions. But they tend to never die so over the years we end up with a cluttered channel list.