Long lists of "chat" applications that are open source or not are the main problem I have with those applications. The dominant theme in this space is that unlike email or the web, no standard has emerged, so there are always new things like "Facebook Instant Messenger" that seem to be "AOL Instant Messenger 0.999999 or 1.000001" but aren't compatible.

If you are involved with a few work projects, family, open source projects, etc. you have to have ten or so communications apps open, deal with the overhead on startup, software updates, overhead while it is running, all the various foibles of these things.

Agreed. I associate this with greedy closed software that relies on network ownership and overly tolerant consumers.

Done: https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted

Awesome indeed!!! :-)

Just started reading the list, and already found _several_ apps that I've wanted to host = overjoyed!!

Privacytools.io (https://privacytools.io) has a good collection. A lot of privacy software is FOSS.

Standard Notes (https://standardnotes.org) is up there which is a free open-source encrypted notes app that I work on.

That seems like a very broad request. Are you looking for clients? Servers? Self-hosted web solutions? Just names of protocols? Say that I spent a few minutes listing off every piece of related software that I can think of. What's the purpose and benefit?

That's a good question. Purpose and benefit is the promotion of free software in the niche of everyday communication. We list and discuss FOSS options, maybe furthering their use.