Thilo Molitor Application 2022

Summary

• Name: Thilo Molitor
• Mail address: thilo [at] eightysoft [dot] de
• JID: xmpp:thilo.molitor@juforum.de
• Github: https://github.com/tmolitor-stud-tu

I'm studying philosophy, am working as a computer science teacher and have a sole proprietorship selling school management software (https://www.kurswahl-online.de).

About Me

I found out about XMPP in 2015 when I searched for a more privacy friendly chat system than WhatsApp. I never used WhatsApp, but I was in need of a similar solution back then, using SMS was becoming a bit of a hassle.

My XMPP projects and activities

I started by contributing code for XEP-0363 file uploads and downloads/preview to Gajim as modules, eventually working on Gajim's core and fixing various bugs (some of them in it's XEP-0198 implementation).

By the end of 2015 I started to contribute several community modules for Prosody and eventually took over maintainership for mod_cloud_notify (XEP-0357) and mod_smacks (XEP-0198).

2017 I started to implement push notifications in Monal (iOS) client, but it took some time until this feature was released. The server part of Monal's push notifications, the "appserver" in XEP-0357 parlance, was published under MIT license at https://github.com/tmolitor-stud-tu/mod_push_appserver/

In 2020 I started to work more regularly on Monal and with help from Friedrich eventually reworked the whole codebase as well as implemented some new features. In summer 2022 Anu resigned and I became the lead developer of Monal. Monal can be found on Github: https://github.com/monal-im/Monal

I contributed to XEPs as well: in late 2021 I reworked the whole JMI XEP (XEP-0353). Lately I also submitted a new ProtoXEP for SCRAM based SASL downgrade protection and, together with MattJ, a big overhaul of SASL2 (XEP-0388).

Motivation

I believe decentralized communication is the key to a better future. To make that happen, I try to identify problems (bugs, missing software parts, missing Apps etc.) and solve them (mostly prioritized by my personal needs).

Monal eventually outgrew my personal needs, but it's really fulfilling to work on this client and I like pushing the bar for modern iOS (and macOS) clients.