We've never left. https://pidgin.im/

Pidgin is still here and does work (to some level) with all of those protocols. https://pidgin.im/plugins/?publisher=all&query=&type=Protoco...

We've been working on our next major release for a long time now to better support modern protocols. But as an unfunded Open Source project it's hard to get things done quickly when it's a "free time" only project.

You could just use libpurple to do all the im stuff and literally just write a user interface. That said, purple 2 isn't really designed for modern chat networks, but we're trying to solve that with the still unreleased purple3.

You may be interested in our State of the Birds which cover libpurple and pidgin development. https://discourse.imfreedom.org/tag/state-of-the-bird

We (Pidgin) probably could have kept that code working if we had access to a server. But we didn't, and it bitrot, so we've since archived it to https://github.com/pidgin/retro-prpl/tree/main/sametime

We're working hard on getting back to that, but it takes time, and we're an unfunded open source project, but soon maybe?

You may be interested in our monthly updates https://discourse.imfreedom.org/tag/state-of-the-bird

That was due to a trademark violation and nothing to do with TOS.

We (Pidgin/Gaim/Finch/libpurple) have never been TOS compliant.

The project is still alive and we're trying to finish our next major version to be able to better support modern protocols and features.

We do monthly updates on the status of the project that we call State of the Bird and they can be found here https://discourse.imfreedom.org/tag/state-of-the-bird.

Remind me (in a millenium or two) when you can finally do XMPP MAM + message carbons. Until then: lol

Most went to libera, some went to OFTC[1], and a few moved to matrix as well.

[1] https://www.oftc.net/

We're working on not needing patches.. We have an installer in the works, but in the mean time check out https://github.com/pidgin/retro-prpl

There are binaries in the action artifacts, but like I said an installer is coming soon (tm)