[tor-talk] Why was Jitsi not considered for TIMB ?

[Sukhbir Singh]

Andreas Kuckartz:
> "When deciding which client we would use for the TIMB, there were three
> options: Pidgin/libpurple, xmpp-client and Instantbird."
> https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/sponsors/SponsorO/TIMB
> 
> How was this set of only three options compiled? What were the criteria?

Announcements [0,1] about this were made on tor-dev with subsequent
meetings on the mailing lists and the #tor-dev IRC channel.

[0] -
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-September/005512.html
[1] -
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-October/005589.html

In the discussions, no one advocated for Jitsi. Pidgin [2] and
xmpp-client [3] were discussed, along with Instantbird [4].

[2] -
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-October/005546.html
[3] -
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-October/005544.html
[4] -
https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-October/005555.html

> In particular: Why was Jitsi not one of the candidates (although it had
> been recommended by Jacob Appelbaum) ?

Short answer: Instantbird meets all our requirements, except the OTR
thing, on which Arlo is working. It blends in with the Tor ecosystem
(Tor Browser, TorBirdy) and helps us to leverage existing and current
work being done on them such as the Tor Launcher and the deterministic
builds system. (We also have substantial in-house Mozilla expertise
which we can use for Instantbird.)

Also, during the security analysis (see above), we found that
Instantbird is in pretty good shape already. Some more information about
this is available at:
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/sponsors/SponsorO/TIMB#WhyInstantbird.

-- 
Sukhbir