Silky

Silky, a secure chat client for the SILC protocol, is a project that was launched in the summer of 2003. The motivation behind it was the lack of a good graphical SILC client at the time. The project's primary objective was to develop an easy-to-use chat client that would suit the needs of both beginners and advanced users.

At the time of its launch, there was only one fully featured client which was a textual client. This made it clear that there was an obvious demand for an easy-to-use graphical client. A first proof-of-concept version of Silky was drafted quickly in just a couple of days, and this generated interest in developing a fully featured graphical client.

After a year and a half of development, Silky is now starting to look and feel like a real chat client thanks to contributions from many friendly people. Silky differentiates from other simple SILC clients like GAIM by having more features and flexibility but without losing ease of use. One of Silky's key features is portability. The code has been tested to work in all major operating systems including Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.

Silky runs in all kinds of environments from embedded Linux devices to powerful desktop workstations. The next steps for the project are to complete all the missing features and to get Silky shipped with all major Linux distributions.

Some key features of Silky include its secure chat client, simple and easy-to-use user interface, cross-platform compatibility, and its use of the SILC Protocol. Additionally, Silky is an open source application with a GPL licence. The only requirement for Silky is the SILC Toolkit (libsilc).

The latest release of Silky is a secure chat client for GTK+-2 using the SILC protocol, further improving its security and functionality. In summary, Silky is a chat client that is both easy to use and secure and has many useful features.