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XMPP works – 1 July 2020

xmpp.org

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Re: XMPP works – 1 July 2020

#31

Post by jcbrand »

jayd16 wrote: post #12
GuardLlama wrote: post #6

XMPP doesn't "work", but on the other hand, the alternatives probably worse: 1. Don't run your own server? A co-worker once operated a fairly popular "public" XMPP server with a decent number of typically active users, a couple hundred. Some eastern European "darkweb" drug sellers had an account on the server, so their competitors thought it worthwhile to threaten the XMPP operator with very directed violence. If you…

When I used it professionally it was always a pain. XMPP was very chatty for mobile. Multi user chat and chat history was a pain to get working. Clustering was also dark magic. This was Ejabberd which was considered the best option at the time. At the time, it felt like every feature was stuck in beta/RFC mode with very poor cross server compatibility. How is a federated protocol supposed to work like that? I think X…

Running an XMPP server is much easier than running a mail server.

I know, I've run both for a number of years.

Very few people need clustering support.

Re: XMPP works – 1 July 2020

#32

Post by gspr »

ReactiveJelly wrote: post #15
black_puppydog wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

facebook and google at least simply isolated their users from the rest of xmpp at some point. oops, if only we had been warned. I will never forget how a few years back, a friend (and a techie at that, albeit more scientific) explained to me their amazing idea of a messenger that you could use between different chat providers, and messages would just go from one to the other. "Imagine you could send a message on face…

Email seems like such an anachronism. All the big providers manage to get along with each other. At least we have some solace [1] in that, unlike chat and Git, it's fucking impossible to self-host e-mail. [1] This part is the joke.

> Email seems like such an anachronism. All the big providers manage to get along with each other.

Think of the value of this! Anyone, anywhere, using whatever client they choose, can send a basic message to anyone and expect it to arrive and be taken seriously.

Imagine if IM had worked the same way! I know XMPP is a shitstorm, but one can dream.

Not until I left academia and started working for MegaCorp that mandates outlook web as the only email client did I truly internalize the value of this.

Re: XMPP works – 1 July 2020

#33

Post by gsich »

im3w1l wrote: post #17
ReactiveJelly wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email seems like such an anachronism. All the big providers manage to get along with each other. At least we have some solace [1] in that, unlike chat and Git, it's fucking impossible to self-host e-mail. [1] This part is the joke.

Even though it's widely recognized as impossible for individuals to self-host, at least there are many available providers, and any medium+ size organization can self-host. Things could be better but they could be worse too.

By whom? The crowd on HN? Selfhosting email is obviously doable. Selfhosting does not imply residential IP.

Re: XMPP works – 1 July 2020

#34

Post by MattJ100 »

GuardLlama wrote: post #6

XMPP doesn't "work", but on the other hand, the alternatives probably worse: 1. Don't run your own server? A co-worker once operated a fairly popular "public" XMPP server with a decent number of typically active users, a couple hundred. Some eastern European "darkweb" drug sellers had an account on the server, so their competitors thought it worthwhile to threaten the XMPP operator with very directed violence. If you…

This is the gap Snikket[1] is aiming to fill. A preconfigured XMPP server that you can safely and easily run yourself (it's invite-based registration), with "blessed" apps provided for each platform that are guaranteed to be maintained to a common standard.

It's early days and there's still some way to go, but the current release (server + Android client) is receiving excellent feedback from those using it.

The next primary focus is iOS. There are several XMPP clients available on iOS, but none yet fit the bill. That's where most of the work ahead lies for the coming months.

[1]: https://snikket.org/

Re: XMPP works – 1 July 2020

#35

Post by charliebrownau »

rektide wrote: post #4
foxfired wrote: post #2

What was it about XMPP that made people move to facebook, slack, hangout or other closed systems? In 2011, at my job everyone used their own favorite account to chat with each other. I'd logged on Empathy with my yahoo mail. My coworkers were on gmail, aol, yahoo, hotmail, facebook, and some I can't even remember. Chatting wasn't a problem. How did it go from being a convenient thing for everyone to everyone should u…

"How did it go from being a convenient thing for everyone to everyone should use slack?" Correction. Everyone went to Facebook. Because Facebook was convenient. Now we are all heading to slack (& discord) because XMPP was no longer convenient & the right-wingnuts are the top 10 shares every single day every day on Faceboook so we no longer wanna hang out on it.

[dead]

Re: XMPP works – 1 July 2020

#36

Post by samoa42 »

Semaphor wrote: post #30
GuardLlama wrote: post #6

XMPP doesn't "work", but on the other hand, the alternatives probably worse: 1. Don't run your own server? A co-worker once operated a fairly popular "public" XMPP server with a decent number of typically active users, a couple hundred. Some eastern European "darkweb" drug sellers had an account on the server, so their competitors thought it worthwhile to threaten the XMPP operator with very directed violence. If you…

1. there are a bunch of public servers that have been running for a long time. Including one by the CCC (Chaos Computer Club, German privacy and security advocacy NGO). 2. IMO the biggest hindrance with XMPP. So which XEPs do I need to support on the server? Okay, got what I wanted. How do I find out exactly which are supported on which client? 3. Manual account creation, thanks to federation I don’t need external us…

on 1. the mentioned server was(is?) suffering from to much publicity. the ccc tried very hard to get ppl to use different ones.

Re: XMPP works – 1 July 2020

#37

Post by samoa42 »

icedchai wrote: post #16
jayd16 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I used it professionally it was always a pain. XMPP was very chatty for mobile. Multi user chat and chat history was a pain to get working. Clustering was also dark magic. This was Ejabberd which was considered the best option at the time. At the time, it felt like every feature was stuck in beta/RFC mode with very poor cross server compatibility. How is a federated protocol supposed to work like that? I think X…

I worked on an XMPP client for a while, many years ago, for a proprietary chat system that used ejabberd as a back end. The protocol is/was awful. On a related note, AOL should've open sourced and federated AIM. Everyone in the late 90's, early 2000's was on it.

> AOL should've open sourced and federated AIM

afaik AIM was a derivative of ICQ, but yea those were the good times. today i know more ppl that won't touch whatsapp then there were w/o icq numbers back than, probably the closest we've got to a ubiquitous instant messanging. i still remember my icq# althou i havent used it in like 15y and have burned throu like five phone numbers since.

Re: XMPP works – 1 July 2020

#38

Post by zelphirkalt »

A while ago I tried getting the latest version of Gajim (XMPP client) to run with OMEMO (encryption plugin) on Trisquel. I worked through lots and lots of compilation issues for dependency libraries of Gnome and other stuff that was new to me, but after trying for something like 3 or 4 days, I lost motivation. I also did not want to use the version number-wise much older version of Gajim to be able to use it. Perhaps that was silly of me.

I did run the older version to try Gajim out and to see how one connects to servers and which servers to use and whatever. That worked actually pretty well. I only had to find an OMEMO supporting server in at least superficially trustworthy hands. I really likes the instant feeling of sending messages and being able to log into 2 accounts on different servers and sending myself messages.

I'll have to try it again at some point. I would really like to know a reliable long term server, run by people with a privacy mindset though.

Re: XMPP works – 1 July 2020

#39

Post by Arnt »

toast0 wrote: post #28
justinsaccount wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably around 2011 I was trying to push for XMPP at a .edu for internal chat (they was no current system at all). Around that time the iPad was showing up everywhere and I found was that there were zero good iOS XMPP clients. Every single one we tried, I'd notice it was proxying the credentials through a 3rd party server to deal with the lack of background connection support and to handle the push notifications. Th…

Yeah, Android in 2011 could just run a connection in the background and actually work (assuming the client pings when idle / and adapts the ping interval to avoid stateful firewalls with low idle timeouts). But iOS doesn't let you do background sockets, so you need push messages, and that's hard to coordinate between unrelated XMPP servers and clients. Of course, modern Android doesn't let you have background sockets…

I have an android app that uses background connections; it works fine on modern Android. The connections are broken when people walk in and out of WLAN coverage, but as long as the app uses minimal CPU and network traffic Android doesn't intercede much.

Re: XMPP works – 1 July 2020

#40

Post by jayd16 »

jcbrand wrote: post #31
jayd16 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I used it professionally it was always a pain. XMPP was very chatty for mobile. Multi user chat and chat history was a pain to get working. Clustering was also dark magic. This was Ejabberd which was considered the best option at the time. At the time, it felt like every feature was stuck in beta/RFC mode with very poor cross server compatibility. How is a federated protocol supposed to work like that? I think X…

Running an XMPP server is much easier than running a mail server. I know, I've run both for a number of years. Very few people need clustering support.

My use cases were a large social app with chat and a AAA game with team chat. This was almost a decade ago but in both cases a single server was deemed insufficient by our ops people. I suppose you're right, though. I've never had to maintain a mail system of similar scale.
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