101–110 of 169 posts
Signal is a centralized point of failure and surveillance. Why can't I run my own signal server? Why doesn't the client support this? We need something like Signal that that isn't under the control of a single party.
That very much sounds like Matrix. Not only it provides a secure, federated WhatsApp/Signal-like experience, but it can replace Slack as well.
The advantage of slack over jabber is not only that the client doesn't suck (it's just electron) but that the server logs and creates a continuous experience for the user no matter if hes on mobile, in a browser or both.
There's an XEP for the server to keep a message archive and provide the same experience. http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0136.html What servers, and what clients implement it though? No idea...
It's still experimental, but it should replace message archiving "soon" once a few final kinks have been worked out (that being said, most servers and clients implement it already and in my mind it's ready for production).
I recently tried riot.im and I'm realy blown away by the good UI they have and how easy it is to get started to develop your own stuff. It is a shame that nothing by the likes exists in the XMPP-sphere. EDIT: As a side note: Daniel Gultsch from the conversations-fame is doing a great job by providing/developing a realy awesome XMPP client for android and pushing the standard forward.
I can only imagine an engineer could see it this way. I found it rather confusing. I tried joining #debian and I kept getting "invitation" messages from some IRC bridge.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought Android is one of the best-supported platforms with conversations.im?
Yes, you're correct; but I found the UI too ugly and at that point I was already too frustrated. It's probably me, but I had put already too much time on something that shouldn't be an issue.
If it's not free software, you have neither freedom nor privacy. If it's not decentralized or federated, you have neither freedom nor privacy. The only contenders for freedom and privacy are XMPP and Matrix. All the others are contenders for money and popularity, but not for freedom and privacy.
Popularity and money are useful and not inherently incompatible with freedom and privacy, but they are secondary. Creating a new application that is not federated or decentralized does not help, no matter how much more popular or convenient it is.
The fundamental problem with decentralized messaging these days is push notifications. Apple, at least, makes it very hard for you to deliver APNS notifications without running a centralized server. XMPP and IRC will never work as well as a centralized service until the notification architecture changes.
I think the real issue here is that too many people conflate XMPP the protocol with the various XMPP based services (most of the smaller free public services do this). If we tell people to "go sign up for an XMPP account" it's obviously going to be too complicated; they're going to search, find the XSF websites or a bunch of random libraries and protocol information, and give up. Meanwhile, companies can use XMPP and…
Interestingly, email didn't, despite acronyms like POP3, IMAP, SMTP being a frequent occurrence once you try to supply an email client of your choice. So what was different about email, once internet users started escaping the walled gardens of old?
I think the real issue here is that too many people conflate XMPP the protocol with the various XMPP based services (most of the smaller free public services do this). If we tell people to "go sign up for an XMPP account" it's obviously going to be too complicated; they're going to search, find the XSF websites or a bunch of random libraries and protocol information, and give up. Meanwhile, companies can use XMPP and…
Didn't OpenID have this exact same problem? Interestingly, email didn't, despite acronyms like POP3, IMAP, SMTP being a frequent occurrence once you try to supply an email client of your choice. So what was different about email, once internet users started escaping the walled gardens of old?
I think the solution here would be a "lightweight" federation of 3 or 4 entities following a common charter and covering a wide geographical area. If one drops out for some reason, the others will still ensure the service remains alive.