Re: GNOME Chat and the future of instant messaging in gnome

 Wow... this looks very interesting topic, see https://mail.gnome.org/archives/release-team/2015-April/msg00050.html

I think there's an important point here. Consider that messaging is still used and protocols should be prioritized over others.
Have many protocols in the same application is very useful, but now is not a priority, many popular messaging system are integrated into the website like facebook, Hangouts or Skype.

Telepathy framework does not have a very active development, but can be enhanced aseptic protocols to provide free messaging (text, voice call and video call).

So I think 3 protocols must be strengthened and supported in gnome-chat:

SIP:  ReSIProcate is a recent project that enhances SIP support and plans to be used with Telepathy: https://www.resiprocate.org/Telepathy_Connection_Manager
XMPP/Jingle: Free messaging by definition. It includes Gabble and Salut.
Telegram: New protocol, multi-platform, open source and very safe. There are some related projects: https://github.com/majn/telegram-purple https://github.com/TelepathyQt/telepathy-morse

These three protocols can be a solid base to offer chat services gnome. There are other protocols supported in Telepathy, but may be offered externally depending on user/business requirements (groupwise, sametime, silc and zephyr)

CJT