[Psi-devel] socks4(a) support

[matthias sweertvaegher]

On Wed, 08 Nov 2006 23:27:40 +0100, Hal Rottenberg <halr9000 at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> can you give a compelling reason to add support for an older version
> of a protocol for which we already support?  doesn't make sense to me.

a v5 client is not downwards compatible. It's not because you support v5  
that
people _stuck_ with a v4 server are helped out. On a lot of intranets there
is still only a socks4 server available. Since most of the times there
is a strict policy, you as small user can't convince a company to upgrade
to another socks server. On the forum I have seen similar requests for
socks4 support. Most users don't complain, but use another client instead.
That's what I did actually. At work I use Gaim, at home Psi. But I guess
most users would choose to go with one app and stick with for example Gaim.

btw, this was after I tried the HTTP Connect which demands the
jabberserver to set its ports to allowed ports by the web proxy (being
only 80 and 443 for example!). Most of the times, you don't have the luxury
of changing the ports of a jabber server ;) Even then, it's problematic.

I believe, if you want people to use your client, you can't make them
install an external socksclient. It's like releasing a web browser
without proxy support.

Why limit the choices? Why scare off potential new users? It's not
that Psi would get bloated by this really small addition..

Other clients support it too. And the reason they support it, is not
because socks v5 did not exist at that time ;)

I hope it makes a little bit more sense to you now? :)

greets
matthias
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