Psi is a

free Free may refer to: Concept * Freedom, the ability to act or change without constraint or restriction * Emancipate, attaining civil and political rights or equality * Free (''gratis''), free of charge * Gratis versus libre, the difference betw ...

instant messaging Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of synchronous computer-mediated communication involving the immediate ( real-time) transmission of messages between two or more parties over the Internet or another computer network. Originally involv ...

client Client(s) or The Client may refer to: * Client (business) * Client (computing), hardware or software that accesses a remote service on another computer * Customer or client, a recipient of goods or services in return for monetary or other valuable ...

for the

XMPP Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (abbreviation XMPP, originally named Jabber) is an Open standard, open communication protocol designed for instant messaging (IM), presence information, and contact list maintenance. Based on XML (Ext ...

protocol (including such services as

Google Talk Google Talk was an instant messaging service that provided both text and voice communication. The instant messaging service was variously referred to colloquially as Gchat, Gtalk, or Gmessage among its users. Google Talk was also the name o ...

) which uses the Qt toolkit. It runs on

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

(and other

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X, *nix or *NIX) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Uni ...

operating systems),

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

and

OS/2 OS/2 is a Proprietary software, proprietary computer operating system for x86 and PowerPC based personal computers. It was created and initially developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft, under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci, ...

tp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub/qtapps/psi.zip Psi build for OS/2 Version 0.15, ZIP package. (including

eComStation eComStation or eCS is an operating system based on OS/2 Warp for the 32-bit x86 architecture. It was originally developed by Serenity Systems and Mensys BV under license from IBM. It includes additional applications, and support for new hardwa ...

and

ArcaOS ArcaOS is a Proprietary software, proprietary operating system based on OS/2, developed and marketed by Arca Noae, LLC under license from IBM. It was first released in 2017 and builds on OS/2 Warp 4.52 by adding support for new hardware, fixing ...

). User interface of program is very flexible in customization. For example, there are "multi windows" and "all in one" modes, support of different iconsets and themes. Ready-to-install deb and

RPM Revolutions per minute (abbreviated rpm, RPM, rev/min, r/min, or r⋅min−1) is a unit of rotational speed (or rotational frequency) for rotating machines. One revolution per minute is equivalent to hertz. Standards ISO 80000-3:2019 def ...

packages are available for many

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

s. Successful ports of Psi were reported for

Haiku is a type of short form poetry that originated in Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases composed of 17 Mora (linguistics), morae (called ''On (Japanese prosody), on'' in Japanese) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern; that include a ''kire ...

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

and

Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...

Solaris Solaris is the Latin word for sun. It may refer to: Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film * ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem ** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg ** ''Sol ...

operating systems. Due to Psi's free/open-source nature, several

forks In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from 'pitchfork') is a Eating utensil, utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tine (structural), tines with whic ...

have appeared, which occasionally contain features that may appear in future official Psi versions.

Project name

'Psi' is the twenty-third letter of the

Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...

(Ψ), which is used as the software's logo.

Mission statement

The goal of the Psi project is to create a powerful, yet easy-to-use XMPP client that tries to strictly adhere to the XMPP drafts and XMPP XEPs. This means that in most cases, Psi will not implement a feature unless there is an accepted standard for it in the XMPP community. Doing so ensures that Psi will be compatible, stable, and predictable.

History

The application was created by Justin Karneges and it began as a side project. At various points during its existence Karneges was paid to develop the codebase, during which Psi flourished. Typically however, the release cycle of Psi is relatively slow, but the client has always been seen by its fans as a very stable and powerful instant messaging client. Karneges left the project in late 2004 to pursue other endeavors. In 2002 Michail Pishchagin started hacking Qt code which later became libpsi library. Pishchagin joined the team in March 2003 and he is responsible for many large chunks in Psi code. In November 2004, maintenance was taken over by Kevin Smith, a long-time contributor to the project. In 2009, Smith handed maintenance back to Karneges, who also maintains Iris, the Qt/

C++ C++ (, pronounced "C plus plus" and sometimes abbreviated as CPP or CXX) is a high-level, general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup. First released in 1985 as an extension of the C programmin ...

XMPP library upon which Psi is based. Remko Tronçon started writing his custom patches for Psi in 2003, and became an official developer in May 2005. In 2009 a Psi

fork In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods either to h ...

name
Psi+
was started. Project purposes are: implementation of new features, writing of patches and plugins for transferring them to

upstream Upstream may refer to: * Upstream (hydrology), the direction towards the source of a stream (against the direction of flow) * Upstream (bioprocess), part of therapeutic cell manufacturing processes from early cell isolation and cultivation until ...

. As of 2017 all active Psi+ developers have become official Psi developers, and now Psi+ is just a development branch of Psi with

rolling release Rolling release, also known as rolling update or continuous delivery, is a concept in software development of frequently delivering updates to applications. This is in contrast to a ''standard'' or '' point release'' development model which uses ...

development model. Users who wants to receive new features and bug fixes very quickly may use Psi+ on daily basis. Users who do not care about new trends and prefer constancy may choose Psi as it uses classical development model and its releases are quite rare.

Features

Because XMPP allows gateways to other services, which many servers support, it can also connect to

Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...

AIM AIM or Aim may refer to: Computing * AIM alliance, an Apple-IBM-Motorola alliance * AIM (software), AOL Instant Messenger * Fortyfive, a Japanese software development company previously known as AIM Military * Abrams Integrated Management, an ...

Gadu-Gadu Gadu-Gadu ( Polish for "chit-chat"; commonly known as GG or gg) is a Polish instant messaging client using a proprietary protocol. At one time, Gadu-Gadu was the most popular IM service in Poland, with over 15 million registered accounts and ...

ICQ ICQ was a cross-platform instant messaging (IM) and VoIP client founded in June 1996 by Yair Goldfinger, Sefi Vigiser, Amnon Amir, Arik Vardi, and Arik's father, Yossi Vardi. The name ICQ derives from the English phrase "I Seek You". Originally ...

and

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

networks. Other services available using gateway servers include

RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many ...

and

Atom Atoms are the basic particles of the chemical elements. An atom consists of a atomic nucleus, nucleus of protons and generally neutrons, surrounded by an electromagnetically bound swarm of electrons. The chemical elements are distinguished fr ...

news feeds, sending

SMS Short Message Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile phones exchange short text messages, t ...

messages to cellular networks and weather reports. As of 2012, Psi has language packs for 20 languages, with more being created.

Emoticon An emoticon (, , rarely , ), short for emotion icon, is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using Character (symbol), characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers and Alphabet, letters—to express a person's feelings, mood ...

packs are supported using the

jisp Jisp is a village in the Dutch province of North Holland. It is a part of the municipality of Wormerland, and lies about 8 km west of Purmerend. History Jisp, in older forms Gispe (1328, 1387), Gyspe (1344), is named after a river with the s ...

format. Many jisp emoticon packs are available, including ones from AIM,

iChat iChat (previously iChat AV) is a discontinued instant messaging software application developed by Apple Inc. for use on its Mac OS X operating system. It supported instant text messaging over XMPP/Jingle or OSCAR ( AIM) protocol, audio and video ...

, and Trillian. Psi supports file transfers between other XMPP clients, and it is possible to send to or receive files from other IM networks, if the user's servers support this. Psi supports Contact Is Typing Notification (which works with Yahoo!, MSN, and AIM contacts). Version 0.10, released in January 2006, brought automatically resizing contact list and composing window in chat dialogs, tabbed chats, support for Growl messaging system on

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

, window transparency and many other changes. Support of audio and video calls in Psi via

Jingle A jingle is a short song or tune used in advertising and for other commercial uses. Jingles are a form of sound branding. A jingle contains one or more hooks and meanings that explicitly promote the product or service being advertised, usually ...

is implemented via officially supported plugin PsiMedia.

Encryption

Security is also a major consideration, and Psi provides it for both client-to-server (TLS) and client-to-client (

OpenPGP Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is an encryption program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is used for signing, encrypting, and decrypting texts, e-mails, files, directories, and whole disk partit ...

OTR OTR or Otr may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Off the Record with Michael Landsberg'', a sports talk show * Old-time radio, a broadcasting era * Otierre, an Italian hip hop band Science and technology * Ocular tilt reaction, a form of sk ...

, and

OMEMO OMEMO is an extension to the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) for multi-client end-to-end encryption developed by Andreas Straub. According to Straub, OMEMO uses the Double Ratchet Algorithm "to provide multi-end to multi-end e ...

OMEMO Plugin
/ref>) via appropriate plugins. Encryption of messages in group chats is supported only via

plugin.

References

External links

Official website

Interview with Justin Karneges
{{DEFAULTSORT:Psi (Instant Messaging Client) 2001 software Free instant messaging clients Free XMPP clients Instant messaging clients for Linux MacOS instant messaging clients Windows instant messaging clients Portable software Software that uses Qt