Editing Pidgin (software) (section)

=== Pluggability ===

The program is designed to be extended with [[Plug-in (computing)|plugins]]. Plugins are often written by [[Third-party software component|third-party developers]]. They can be used to add support for protocols, which is useful for those such as [[Skype]] or [[Discord]] which have licensing issues (however, the users' data and interactions are still subject to their policies and eavesdropping). They can also add other significant features. For example, the "[[Off-the-Record Messaging]]" (OTR) plugin provides [[end-to-end encryption]].

The TLS encryption system is pluggable, allowing different TLS libraries to be easily substituted. [[GnuTLS]] is the default, and [[Network Security Services|NSS]] is also supported. Some operating systems' ports, such as [[OpenBSD]]'s, choose to use [[OpenSSL]] or [[LibreSSL]] by default instead.