Hey everyone 😃 ,

After 4 long years of hard work and dedication, Jesse Squires recently deprecated one of the most widely used open source iOS projects - JSQMessagesViewController. I believe this project's popularity is evidence enough that the iOS community should continue moving it forward.

The current state of JSQMessageViewController is rock solid. It's been reiterated, battled tested over 4 years, and used by countless apps in production.

It's safe to say that JSQMessagesViewController will continue to serve the needs of developers for a great time to come, but before the day comes where this is no longer the case -- I propose we have a plan for moving forward.

My suggestions:

• We rebrand the project as MessageKit.
• The repository is hosted as an organization as opposed to under a personal account.

I think these two points are important to building an inclusive community where every contributor feels a sense of ownership, importance, and welcome.

• We port the project to Swift.

While there's nothing wrong with Obj-C, I think this is a good opportunity to consider the future of iOS development and port the project to Swift. I believe a Swift codebase will encourage a greater number of contributors and bring fresh blood to the project.

• We rally behind a centralized MessageViewController project for iOS.

Open source projects require an enormous amount of effort to maintain. Instead of building competing MessagesViewController, we should all come together to deliver the highest quality project we can on behalf of the iOS community.

Getting involved/other suggestions:

I remember at the old MessageKit repo there were countless comments from people willing to contribute.

I encourage everyone to share their thoughts and suggestions for the future of this project.

Please discuss any issues/ideas/concerns below.